beginning?
In the silence Mark could hear faintly, but distinctly, the sound of children's laughter from the hall above them.
Mark sat alone upon the highest crest of the low kopjes that stretched into the west, black ironstone ridges breaking out of the flat dry earth like the crested back of a crocodile surfacing from still lake water.
The memory of the hidden arsenal had stayed with him through the night, keeping him from sleep, so that now his eyes felt gritty and his skin stretched tight and dry across the bones of his cheeks.
Lack of sleep had left him with that remote feeling, a lightness of thought, detached from reality, so now he sat in the bright sunlight blinking like a day-flying owl, and looking like a stranger into his own mind.
He felt a rising sense of dismay as he realized how idly he had drifted along the path that had brought him here to the very brink of the abyss. It had taken the feel of the P. I 4 in his hands, and the laughter of children to bring him up at the end of a rope.
All his training, all his deepest beliefs were centred on the sanctity of law, on the order and responsibilities of society. He had fought for that, had spent all of his adult life fighting for that belief. Now suddenly he had drifted, out of apathy, to the camp of the enemy; already he was numbered with the legions of the lawless, already they were arming him to begin the work of destruction. There was no question now that it was merely empty rhetoric shouted at gatherings of drunken labourers, he had seen the guns. It would be cruel and without mercy. He knew Harry Fisher, had recognized the forces that drove him. He knew Fergus MacDonald, the man had killed before and often; he would not flick an eyelid when he killed again.
Mark groaned aloud, aghast at what he had let happen to himself. He who knew what war really was, he who had worn the king's uniform, and won his medal for courage.
He felt the oily warmth of shame in his throat, a gagging sensation, and, to arm himself against future weakness of this same kind, he tried to find the reasons why he had been drawn in.
He realized now that he had been lost and alone, without family or home, and Fergus MacDonald had been the only shelter in the cold. Fergus the older comrade of shared dangers, whom he had trusted without question. Fergus the father figure, and he had followed again, grateful for the guidance, not questioning the destination.
There had, of course, been Helena as well and the hold she had over him, the tightest grip any human could have over another. He had been, and still was, totally obsessed with her. She had awakened his long suppressed and tightly controlled sexuality. Now it was but a breath away from bursting the wall he had built to dam it; when it burst, it might be a force he could not control, and that thought terrified him almost as much as the other.
He tried now to separate the woman from her womanhood, tried to see the person beyond this devastating web she wove around his senses, and he succeeded in as much that he realized that she was not a person he could admire, not the mother he would choose for his children. Also, she was the wife of an old comrade who trusted him completely.
Now he felt he was ready to make the decision to leave, and to carry that resolve through firmly.
He would leave Fordsburg immediately, leave Fergus MacDonald and his dark, cataclysmic schemes. He felt his spirits lighten instantly at the prospect. He would not miss him, nor that drab monastic pay office with its daily penance o boredom and drudgery. He felt the bright young spirit of anticipation flame again.
He would leave Fordsburg on the next train, and Helena. Immediately the flame flickered and his spirit plunged. There was a physical pain in his groin at the prospect, and he felt the cracks open in the dam wall of his passions.
It was dark when he left his bicycle in the garden shed, and he heard voices raised jovially in the house and bursts of laughter. Lights blazed beyond the curtained kitchen windows and when he stepped into the room there were four men at the table. Helena crossed quickly and hugged him impulsively, laughing, with high spots of colour in her cheeks, before taking his hand and leading him to the table. Welcome, comrade. Harry Fisher looked up at Mark with those disturbing eyes and the shock of dark wiry hair hanging on to his forehead. You are in time to join the celebration. Grab the lad a glass, Helena, laughed Fergus, and she dropped his hand and hurried to the cupboard to fetch a glass and fill it with black stout from the bottle.
Harry Fisher raised his own glass to Fergus. Comrades, I give you the new member of the Central Committee Fergus MacDonald. Isn't it wonderful, Mark? Helena squeezed Mark's hand. He's a good man, growled Harry Fisher. The appointment isn't too soon. We need men with Comrade MacDonald's guts. The others nodded agreement over their stout glasses, the two of them were both members of the local committee of the party; Mark knew them well from the meetings. Come, lad. Fergus made room for him at the table and he squeezed in beside him, drawing all their attention. And you, young Mark, Harry Fisher laid a powerful hairy hand on his shoulder, we are going to issue your party card How about that, lad! Fergus winked and nudged Mark in the ribs. Usually it takes two years or more, we don't let the rabble into the party, but you've got friends on the Central Committee now. Mark was about to speak, to refuse the honour he was being accorded. Nobody had asked him, they had taken it that as he was Fergus protege, he was for them. Mark was about to deny it, to tell them the decision he had made that day, when that sense of danger warned him. He had seen the guns, if he was not a friend then he was an enemy with a fatal secret. A secret that they could not risk. He had no doubts at all about these men, now. If he was an enemy, then they would see that he never passed that secret on to another man. But the moment for refusal had passed. Comrade MacDonald, I have a mission for you. It is urgent, and vital. Can you leave your work for two weeks? I've got a sick mother, Fergus chuckled. When do you want me to go, and what do you want me to do? I want you to leave, say Wednesday, that will give me time to give you your orders and for you to make your arrangements. Harry Fisher took a swallow of stout and the froth stayed on his upper lip I'm sending you to visit all the local committees, Capetown, Bloemfontein, Port Elizabeth, so that each of them can be coordinated. Mark felt a guilty lift of relief at the words, there would be no confrontation with Fergus now. He could merely slip away while he was gone on his mission. Then he glanced up and was startled by the gaze that Helena had fastened upon him. She stared at him with the fixed hungry expression of a leopard watching its prey from cover in the last instant before its spring.
Now when their eyes met, she smiled again that secret knowing smile, and the tip of her pink tongue dabbed at her slightly parted lips.
Mark's heart pounded to the point of physical pain and he dropped his eyes hurriedly to his glass. He was to be alone with Helena, and the prospect filled him with dread and a surging passionate heat.
Mark carried Fergus cheap and badly battered suitcase down to the station, and as they took the short cut across open veld, the thick frost crunched like sugar under their feet, and sparkled in myriad diamond points of light in the first rays of the sun.
At the station they waited with four other members of the party for the southbound mail, and when at last it came, puffing hoarsely, shooting steam high into the frosty air, it was thirty-five minutes late. Thirty-five minutes late is almost early for the railways, Fergus laughed, and shook hands with each of them in turn, slapping their
