colour drained away from her face.
'Hello, Ruth. She did not reply immediately. Sean saw her mask her
face with a pale impassivity.
'Hello, Sean. You startled me.'
Saul had missed the interplay of their emotions. He was climbing up
into the carriage beside her.
'Come, have a look.' Now he was opening the lace shawl, leaning over
the infant, his face alight with pride.
Silently Sean climbed up into the carriage and sat opposite them.
'Let Sean hold her, Ruth.' Saul laughed. 'Let him get a good look at
the loveliest girl in the world.' And he did not notice the way in
which Ruth froze again and hugged the child to her protectively.
'Take her, Sean. I promise she'll not wet you too badly, though she
might sick up a little, ' Saul went on happily.
Sean held out his hands for the infant, watching Ruth's face.
It was defiant, but afraid.
' The colour of her eyes seemed to change a darker bluer grey. The
hard lines around her mouth dissolved and her lips quivered pink and
moist. She leaned forward and placed her daughter in his arms.
It was a long, slow journey up to Johannesburg-a journey broken by
interminable halts. At every siding there was a delay, sometimes of
half an hour but usually of three times that length.
Occasionally, without apparent reason, they groaned to a stop in the
middle of the veld.
'What the hell is the trouble now?'
'Somebody shoot the driver.'
'Not again!
Protest and comment were shouted by the angry heads that protruded from
the windows of every coach. And when the guard trotted up along the
gravel led embanlunent towards the front of the train, he was followed
by a chorus of catcalls and hooting.
'Please be patient, gentlemen. We have to check the culverts and
bridges.
'The -war's over.
'What are you worried about?'
'The jolly old Boer is running so hard he hasn't got time to worry
about bridges.
Men climbed down beside the tracks, and stood in small impatient groups
until the whistle blew and they scrambled aboard as the train jolted
and began crawling forward again.
Sean and Saul sat together in a corner of a crowded compartment and
played Klabrias. Because the majority regarded the cold clean high
veld air with the same horror as if it had been a deadly cyanide gas,
the windows were tightly closed. 'he compartment was blue with
pipe-smoke and fetid with the smell of a dozen unwashed bodies. The
conversation was inevitable.
Confine a number of men in a small space and they'll get round to it in
under ten minutes.
This company had a vast experience in matters pornographic.
