peaceful it was without her screaming and pleading with me to help.
You see she knew I had all the instruments I needed. She begged me to
help. I can remember that; her voice through the fog of whisky. I
think I hated her then. I think I remember hating her, it was all so
confused, so mixed up with the screaming and the liquor.
But at last she was quiet. I don't think I realized she was dead.
I was simply glad she was quiet and I could have peace.' He dropped his
eyes from Bruce's face.
'I was too drunk to go to the funeral. Then I met a man in a bar-room, I
can't remember how long after it was, I can't even remember where. it
must have been on the Copperbelt. He was recruiting for
Tshombe's army and I signed up; there didn't seem anything else to do.'
Neither of them spoke again until a gendarme brought food to them, hunks
of brown bread spread with tinned butter and filled with bully beet and
pickled onions. They ate in silence listening, to the singing, and Bruce
said at last: 'You needn't have told me.'
'I know.'
'Mike-' Bruce paused.
'Yes?'
'I'm sorry, if that's any comfort.'
'It is,' Mike said.
'It helps to have - not to be completely alone. I like you, Bruce.' He
blurted out the last sentence and Bruce recoiled as though Mike had spat
in his face.
You fool, he rebuked himself savagely, you were wide open then.
You nearly let one of them in again.
Remorselessly he crushed down his sympathy, shocked at the effort it
required, and when he picked up the radio the gentleness had gone from
his eyes.
'Hendry,' he spoke into the set, 'don't talk so much. I put you up front
to watch the tracks.' From the leading truck Wally Hendry looked round
and forked two fingers at Bruce in a casual obscenity, but he turned
back and faced ahead.
'You'd better go and take over from Hendry,' Bruce told Mike.
'Send him back here.' Mike Haig stood up and looked down at Bruce.
'What are you afraid of?' his voice softly puzzled.
'I gave you an order, Haig.'
'Yes, I'm on my way.'
The aircraft found them in the late afternoon. It was a Vampire
jet of the Indian Air Force and it came from the north.
They heard the soft rumble of it across the sky and then saw it glint
like a speck of mica in the sunlight above the storm clouds ahead of
them.
'I bet you a thousand francs to a handful of dung that this Bucko don't
know about us,' said Hendry with anticipation, watching the jet turn off
its course towards them.
'Well, he does now,' said Bruce.
Swiftly he surveyed the rain clouds in front of them.
They were close; another ten minutes' run and they would be under them,
and once there they were safe from air attack for the belly of the
