could not meet them. Waite Courtney used the whip on the horses and drove them back along the road to Lady- burg: he drove furiously with the wind streaming his beard back from his face.
Sean watched them go. After they had disappeared among the trees he remained standing alone on the veranda; then suddenly he turned and ran back through the house. He ran out of the kitchen door and across the yard to the saddle-room, snatched a bridle down from the rack and ran to the paddock. He picked a bay mare and worked her into a corner of the fence until he could slip his arm around her neck. He forced the bit into her mouth, buckled the chin strap and swung up onto her bare back.
He kicked her into a run and put her to the gate, swaying back as her body heaved up under him and falling forward on her neck as she landed. He gathered himself and turned her head towards the Lady-burg road.
It was eight miles to town and the buggy reached it before Sean. He found it outside Doctor Van Rooyen's surgery: the horses were blowing hard, and their bodies were dark with sweat. Sean slid down off the mare's back; he went up the steps to the surgery door and quietly pushed it open. There was the sweet reek of chloroform in the room. Garrick lay on the table, Waite and his wife stood on each side of him, and the doctor was washing his hands in an enamel basin against the far wall. Ada Courtney was crying silently, her face blurred with tears.
They all looked at Sean standing in the doorway. Come here, said Waite Courtney, his voice flat and expressionless. Come and stand here beside me. They're going to cut off your brother's leg and, by Christ, I'm going to make you watch every second of itV
They brought Garrick back to Theunis Kraal in the night.
Waite Courtney drove the buggy very slowly and carefully and Sean trailed a long way behind it. He was cold in his thin khaki shirt, and sick in the stomach with what he had seen. There were bruises on his upper arm where his father had held him and forced him to watch.
The servants had lanterns burning on the veranda. They were standing in the shadows, silent and anxious. As Waite carried the blanket-wrapped body up the front steps one of them called softly in the Zulu tongue. The leg?
It is gone, Waite answered gruffly.
They sighed softly all together and the voice called again. He is well? He is alive, said Waite.
He carried Garrick through to the room that was set aside for guests and sickness. He stood in the centre of the floor holding the boy while his wife put fresh sheets on the bed; then he laid him down and covered him.
Is there anything else we can do? asked Ada. We can wait. Ada groped for her husband's hand. Please, God, let him live, she whispered. He's so young It's Sean's fault! Waite's anger flared up suddenly. Garry would never have done it On his own. He tried to disengage Ada's hand.
What are You going to do? she asked. I'm going to beat him! I'm going to thrash the skin off him! Don't, please don't! What do you mean? He had enough. Didn't you see his face? Waite's shoulders sagged wearily and he sat down on the armchair beside the bed. Ada touched his cheek. I'll stay here with Garry. You go and try to get some sleep, my dear. No, Waite said. She sat down on the side of the chair and Waite put his arm around her waist. After a long while they slept, huddled together on the chair beside the bed.
The days that followed were bad. Garrick's mind escaped from the harness of sanity and ran wild into the hot land of delirium. He panted and twisted his fever-flushed face from side to side; he cried and whimpered in the big bed; the stump of his leg puffed up angrily and the stitches were drawn so tight it seemed they must tear out of the swollen flesh. The infection oozed yellow and foul-smelling onto the sheets.
Ada stayed by him all that time. She swabbed the sweat from his face and changed the dressings on his stump, she held the glass for him to drink and gentled him when he raved. Her eyes sunk darkly into their sockets with fatigue and worry, but she would not leave him. Waite could not bear it. He had the masculine dread of suffering that threatened to suffocate him if he stayed in the room: every half hour or so he came in and stood next to the bed and then he turned away and went back to his restless wandering around the house. Ada could hear his heavy tramp along the corridors.
Sean stayed in the house also: he sat in the kitchen or at the far end of the veranda. No one would speak to him, not even the servants; they chased him when he tried to sneak into the bedroom to see Garrick. He was lonely with the desolate loneliness of the guilty, for Garry was going to die, he knew it by the evil silence that hung over Theunis Kraal. There was no chatter nor pot-clatter from the kitchens, no rich deep laughter from his father: even the dogs were subdued. Death was at Theunis Kraal. He could smell it on the soiled sheets that were brought through to the kitchen from Garrick's room; it was a musky smell, the smell of an animal. Sometimes he could almost see it: even in bright daylight sitting on the veranda. he sensed it crouched near him like a shadow on the edge of his vision. it had no form as yet. It was a darkness, a coldness that was gradually building up around the house, gathering its strength until it could take his brother.
On the third day Waite Courtney came roaring out of Garrick's room. He ran through the house and out into the stable yard. Karlie! Where are you? Get a saddle onto Rooiberg! Hurry, man, hurry, damn you. He's dying, do you hear me, he's dying! Sean did not move from where he sat against the wall next to the back door. His arm tightened around Tinker's neck and the dog touched his cheek with a cold nose; he watched his father jump up onto the stallion's back and ride. The hooves beat away towards Lady-burg and when they were gone he stood up and slipped into the house: he listened outside Garrick's door and then he opened it quietly and went in. Ada turned towards him, her face was tired. She looked much older than her thirty-five years, but her black hair was drawn back behind her head into a neat bun and her dress was fresh and clean. she was still a beautiful woman despite her exhaustion- There was a gentleness about her, a goodness that suffering and worry could not destroy. She held out her hand to Sean and he crossed and stood beside her chair and looked down at Garrick. Then he knew why Ins father had gone to fetch the doctor. Death was in the room, strong and icy cold hovered over the bed. Garrick lay very still: his face was yellow, his eyes were closed and his lips were cracked and dry.
the loneliness and the guilt came swelling up into Sean's throat and choked him into sobs, sobs that forced him to his knees and he put his face into Ada's lap and cried. He cried for the last time in his life, he cried as a man cries, painfully, each sob tearing something inside him.
Waite Courtney came back from Lady-burg with the doctor. Once more Sean was driven out and the door closed. That night he heard them working in Garrick's room, the murmuring of their voices and the scuff of feet on the yellow wood floor. In the morning it was over. The fever was broken and Garrick was alive. Only just alive his eyes were sunk into dark holes like those of a skull.
His body and his mind were never to recover completely from that brutal pruning.
It was slow, a week before he was strong enough to feed himself. His first need was for his brother, before he was able to talk above a whisper it was, Where's Sean? And Sean, still chastened, sat with him for hours at a time. Then when Garrick slept Sean escaped from the room, and with a fishing-rod or his hunting sticks and Tinker barking behind him went into the veld. It was a measure of Sean's repentance that he allowed himself to be contained within the sick-room for such long periods.
It chafed him like ropes on a young colt: no one would ever know what it cost him to sit quietly next to Garrick's bed while his body itched and burned with unexpended energy and his mind raced restlessly.
Then Sean had to go back to school. He left on a Monday morning while it was still dark. Garrick listened to the sounds of departure, the whicker of the horses outside on the driveway and Ada's voice reciting last minute instructions: I've put a bottle of cough mixture under your shirts, give it to Friulein as soon as you unpack.
Then she'll see that you take it at the first sign of a cold. Yes, Ma. There are six vests in the small case, use a new one every day. Vests are sissy things u will do as you're told, Young man. Waite's voice, Hurry up with your porridge, we've got to get going if I'm to have u in town by seven o'clock. Can I say goodbye to Garry? You said goodbye last night, he'll still be asleep now. Garrick opened his mouth to call out, but he knew his voice would not carry. He lay quietly and listened to the chairs scraping back from the dining-room table, the procession of footsteps out onto the veranda, voices raised in farewells and at last the wheels of the buggy crunching gravel as they moved away down the drive. it was very quiet after Sean had left with his father.
After that the weekends were, for Garrick, the only bright spots in the colourless passage of time. He longed for them to come and each one was an eternity after the last, time passes slowly for the young and the sick. Ada and Waite knew a little of how he felt. They moved the centre of the household to his room: they broughtt two of the fat leather armchairs from the lounge and put them on each side of his bed and they spent the evenings there.
Waite with his pipe in his mouth and a glass of brandy at his elbow, whittling at the wooden leg he was making and laughing his deep laugh, Ada with her knitting and the two of them trying to reach him. Perhaps it was this conscious effort that was the cause of their failure, or perhaps it is impossible to reach back down the years to a small boy. There is always that reserve, that barrier between the adult and the secret world of youth. Garrick laughed with them and they talked together, but it was not the same as having Sean there.
