Bab 10: Chapter 10
It was past twelve when the Minerva halted by the old acacia tree. Mary got out and exchanged a few words with Daudi, trusting him to inform Hadebe of their arrival. It was raining. Mary went inside, made herself tea, and stood on the patio pondering in the doorway.
The weather had only worsened when a cart pulled up. Through the dense curtain of water, Mary watched Charles jump out and move to the back; he looked wild, with his hair and beard looking heavy with rain and shirt sticking to his shoulders and chest. He kicked his heels. The wooden cart wheel shook as he rid his boots of mud, and Charles exchanged a few words with Daudi who had ran up with a towel; when the boy nodded towards the house and Charles made eye contact with her. Two seconds passed. Charles turned away to disclose something to Daudi. The boy nodded. Charles ran up to the house. She sipped her drink, insolently at ease, watching Charles as he ascended the steps up to the patio and taking heavy breaths of the dense air. Charles was rumpled and wet. He adopted her be-damned-to-you attitude, looked her over, and shook out his jacket unbidden, wiping his face and neck with the towel.
A family of five gathered around the cart to help a single old man get out.
"They better come in." Mary said, still regarding the family.
"Sure, they better. They'll come in." Charles's voice was grave and hoarse, and he regarded the sky and then the cart where it stood sinking in the mud. He shook himself out. The water seeped from his boots into the wooden floor as he took the towel to his hair. Watching, Mary felt the forbearing urge to comb it out of his face. Charles met her eyes. There was a characteristic excitement in his bearing brought out by the rain, and a barely-there, knowing smile graced the corner of his lips.
"There's tea in the kitchen," Mary said, and then nodded towards the family. "Where did you go?"
"Olturot." Charles turned away. "How did it go?"
"Do we have to talk about it?"
Charles remained standing in the doorway, searching her. "No," he said softly. "And you don't have to pretend you haven't been at Mombasa when your eyes are like that and your shoulders are as tense and there are slit marks in the corners of your mouth as though you've bit through them."
A twinge crept up her spine at being seen so simply. "Same old." Mary said, shrugging and looking back at the rain— a little faster than was necessary.
"We need to get the cart out of there." He remarked. "Or it'll be hell to get it out later."
"I'll call the boy."
"Leave him. He's with Hadebe and Dhakiya." He assessed his wet jacket. Then threw it on the chair. He looked at her, question in his eyes as he rolled up his sleeves.
She groaned and put down her mug and went to button open her sleeves. "You take left. I go right." She said, not looking at him as she put up her hair. "Where to?"
"Behind the stockage there's space. Old sailing canvas. We'll roll onto it." Then he stepped out into the rain, Mary on his heels.
The immediate wet pressure was warm and unwelcome, but not entirely suffocating. Mary titled her head downwards, rivulets straining down her nose. Charles plodded his way over to the left and clenched both hands on the rough wood. The top edge of the cart came up to their shoulders. Charles watched her and then nodded at Mary, she nodded back and inclined her head towards the stockage.
The rain was nigh deafening.
The cart and the wheels were not that heavy, but they didn't easily let themselves be steered. Gritting her teeth and straightening her back for the nth time to take away the pressure on her upper back, Mary ploughed on through the mud. She huffed fruitlessly to get a hair out of her mouth. Then the cart halted. Charles had gotten stuck. Mary attempted to keep her wheel on an elevated patch, and went round the back, keeping one hand to the back as to prevent the cart rolling back into the track.
"Dug in?" She asked, voice raised over the rain. She crouched down beside him.
"No. Somethings in the way. I can't see—" he tried to shake it— "maybe a rock."
"Around?"
"Sure, we'll try."
Once more she gripped the wet wooden chaff of the wheel with one hand and pulled the cart back with the other. They let it roll in reverse half a metre before pushing it out of its tract, slightly to the right, and forced forward. They had another ten meters to go. The worst of the sodden soil was behind them, and Mary quickly spotted the sail once they had rounded the building. At last, with a dull thud in her shoulders, they pushed the cart up the sail. Mary knocked the cart for Charles to hold and went to find two rocks of considerable weight. They put them behind the wheels.
"What?" Mary said.
Charles moved his lips again, but Mary didn't make out anything over the wet clatter on the canvass. Water pooled around her heels. Seeing her confusion, Charles seemed to relent, and, checking the rocks behind the wheels, followed Mary as she started into a brisk jog back to the house.
Once back under the patio, Mary shook herself out with a dissatisfied noise. She then took a seat and began to unlace her waterlogged boots.
Mary felt more than heard Charles come up behind her. "Do you remember the Mundi and how we'd sing in the rain coming down through Conduit Street behind the inn at dusk?" She asked him as he passed her a towel.
"Aren't you cold?"
"No."
He watched her intently, "I remember everything."
"So do I," she said. "And why were we so damn stupid?"
Charles barked a surprised laugh and leant himself against the wall. He braced his hands on either side of himself. The spread flexed his biceps and shoulders, both bared by the wet shirt. "We were rivals as well as lovers." There was a smile in his voice.
"I know it and we shouldn't have been. But we didn't care for anyone else, did we? When that was all we had?"
"No. Truly." Charles looked down at her, seeing her so simply, and yet Mary knew that anyone who did not know her as their wife could not have noticed anything unnatural, either in the sound or the sense of her words.
Denham-Moore came back to the forefront of her mind.
"It was a terrible thing." She admitted.
"They often are." Charles's face did something fleeting and resigned as he lay his fingers over the back of her chair. They really needed to get inside and put on something dry. Charles looked at where Silva quickly crossed the courtyard. He shifted beside her. "What can you tell me?"
"Nothing. Just that."
"There's a lot of bad people out there."
"Van t'Sand said the same."
"Van t'Sand's a smart woman."
Mary looked into his eyes, which were gentle and sincere, and for the first time she thought that the light penetrated into them more deeply, whereas before she had gotten the impression that any light was kept to the surfaces of his eyes, just as it was kept to the surfaces of the lenses of spectacles. She sensed a completely foreign strength in him, and was sure that she must be dreaming; and would still rather be dreaming than be seen and understood and unearthed by this man who she no longer knew, and perhaps had never known at all.
"I'm glad you still wear it." Charles remarked.
"I'm sorry?"
He turned away from her as he came away from the wall and just raised and shook his wrist, seemingly unable to get the words out. She looked down at her own wrist. Immediate disquiet rocked through her.
"Oh God— it was an anniversary gift, wasn't it?"
"Our seventh." He stood with his back to her. Fisting the railing of the patio and looking out over the courtyard.
"We gave a good party that night."
"Eveline Hayes ended it in the shrubbery against the south wall of the serre."
"Yes, there was an awful amount of drinking, wasn't there? I suppose that's what I get for marrying a vintner's son."
"I remember your father's face."
"Oh— he liked you and you know it."
"I suppose."
"But I suppose we just cared less for it." Mary said. Charles's left hand on the railing twitched briefly closed and then relaxed again. Nothing showed on his face.
"We've had our good moments."
"Sure, but the times weren't good."
"Maybe," Charles said. "Everybody claimed to know what was happening at all times and how the war was going to end and then everybody was proven right even when they gambled wrongly."
"People didn't always seem as goddamned mean and evil, though. I liked that."
Charles looked back at her, inquiringly. "How did the kid— what's his name?— Leigh react?"
"He was sent off before it got ugly."
The shadows became long and strong. The rain tapered out, and Mary, her legs drawn up under her, regarded the dog pass from the kitchen to the patio and let itself fall down beside Charles. It looked up and wagged its tail lazily.
"How's Bates?" She asked and she brought the tea-mug to her mouth. It was empty.
"I went there day before yesterday. Henderson asked me. Bates wouldn't make the trip."
"You don't have to trouble yourself when he's to proud."
"I know." Charles nodded, a single dip of his chin that slid the light off his face to catch his eyes. "I'll give you something to settle him. What you've got doesn't work for him. And I only had so much with me when I went."
"What did you think?"
"Big dam."
"Big dam. Lot's of water."
"Hm. You'd be surprised."
Mary made an vaguely-inquisitive noise. Charles waved it away, eyebrows drawn together, his gaze far away. "Just something Hadebe said. That they didn't need it. I don't know."
"How is she?"
Charles looked up. "Maybe you'll see her in the morning," then his mind distanced itself again, eyes on her shoulder and gaze far-away, "I saw the others, too."
"You've met most. Only Wilson, Cools, and Leigh—"
"No— no. No, I mean, the miners." Charles said. And then he seemed to shake himself out of it. And, still eying the wood of the railing, and his fingers chipping away at the peeling paint, he said: "I should get someone to fix it."
"What?"
"Nothing."
"You alright?"
"I think you and I should take a walk."
"It's late. I drove all day."
"We're taking a walk. I need to let Chipo out."
It was pleasant and cold. The dog winded itself between Charles's legs before it turned to sniff something a few yards back. The evening was abuzz with flies and gnats and the unique sound and sense of the wind between the house and the clinic and the storage building.
From the moment they'd put on dry coats and descended the patio to the yard, Charles had retreated back into himself; a pattern she recognised well enough though Mary didn't know what this was about. She had an idea, mind you, but whatever silent antipathy that permeated the air around Charles was either of his own devising, or he thought she owed him something.
Was this about their fight when she'd left? But they fought often and well. And they often just put it away to deal with it on their own until it came up again and they'd both seemed content to continue it like that. It'd been long since either of them had made the effort to do it properly and talk it out afterwards and these days it was just easier to accept another polarity between them rather than put in the effort to work it out.
This was something different. And Mary, galvanised by some unseen factor, studied the outline of Charles's back against the light of the house. She swallowed and asked: "Will you explain it to me?"
Charles looked back. "I'm sorry?"
"The miners. What you said. Will you explain it to me?"
His eyes moved between hers. Charles then looked down and away before he opened his mouth. "Most symptoms are atypical." A clinical, distant look had come over his features. "The waste progressively builds up in their lungs. It leads to inflammation to the point where connective tissue replaces normal parenchymal tissue to such an extent until," he looked back up to her, "well— until all that's left is scar tissue. The tissue just. dies, Mary. While they're still living and working and breathing." Charles's face remained impassive. Which was worse than any harrowing expression he could have made. "Until the cells just… self-digest." Charles looked away, the slightest emotion visible in the tight line of his shoulders. "You know what it feels like to walk around with dying lungs? If only—! You'd leave that wretched pipe of yours in a ditch— with all that damned smoke!" He seemed to struggle to compose himself, and he turned away, taking deep, deliberate breaths. And before she could convince herself otherwise, Mary laid a hand between his shoulder-blades. Rising and falling quickly with every breath Charles took, back muscles stretching and pulling under his shirt. She remained silent. Mary was aware Charles had a great capacity for empathy. And it just made him decent enough. It just made him gentle.
Charles's voice returned. "It's a… godawful process. And it's slow. We call it a long disease but five years doesn't seem all that long to me. It drags. To the point where you're out of breath after a few steps— where you can't even administer anything for the pain which is… unimaginable."
Mary's hesitance lasted a moment. It could have been ages. Mary Graves then leant her forehead against Charles's back. He felt warm. Alive. Heartbeat steady, even as he struggled to even the tremor in his breathing. Charles inhaled sharply through his nose before turning without jostling her and bringing his eyes back to Mary.
Charles's anger was measured so different from her own, there was no raised voice, no broken furniture or arrogance. Instead, Charles's fury could be measured in the tautness of his body, the precision of his words and the accuracy of his movements.
Mary Graves couldn't read what lay behind his eyes, now. But they seemed soft, somewhat. Not angry. Mary didn't move. Salt-and-peper hair that was usually coifed was no longer neat and drying in curls, the locks looking slept in and loose so that they hung in Charles's face, gentling the subtle menace of it. Neither of them said anything. Charles's left hand twitched briefly closed and then relaxed again. Nothing and everything showed on his face.
"Now does that suffice?" Charles whispered. "And I don't mean—"
"I know." Mary breathed, and she leant away but kept close, still. They stood like that for a long time. Both thinking a lot, both feeling a lot, and both drinking a lot less than they wanted to. The trees cast long and thin shadows and the outline of the mountains coloured and darkened as the sun disappeared.
Charles let out a breath of air.
The sorrow in his eyes had receded and given way to something distant. "Do you think I could do something here that could be worth anything?"
"Do you not?"
"I suppose."
"Like what?"
"Something. I don't know."
"I don't either, Charles. Whatever you want you can do."
"That's not how it works though, is it?"
"No."
"I don't think anything works just because you want it to work." Charles said, and he was looking at her again.
"We tried."
"More than once." Charles said, tearfully. But when she looked his eyes were warm and mocking, and something besides sorrow came into his face. A soft smile tugged at his mouth.
Mary felt something stir within her—something warm, in spite of the grief and the guilt and the memory of things left behind in the dirt. And she let herself smile back.
One of his hands rose, hovering beside her hip, not quite touching. "I wish it could always be like this," he said, quietly. "Peaceful. Between us."
"Do you suppose we're putting on a performance?"
"No."
"You don't have to act with me, Charles. You don't have to say anything and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing."
"I know."
"Then why do you insist on saying that?"
"I care for you."
"I adore you. That didn't help."
"Do you suppose it would have been better if we'd had children?"
"God, Charles— don't torture yourself with thoughts like that."
"Meaning it wouldn't have made a difference at all."
"Isn't reality enough to occupy ourselves with?"
She had, perhaps, let herself be pulled in too much. Charles's hand drifted over the curve of her hip, to her lower back, where his palm settled. He drew in a shuddering breath, and curled his other arm around her, pressing his face against the side of Mary's head. It was warm. And so, so terribly tempting.
Mary pulled away.
"It's getting colder." She said, quietly. Not yet wanting to disturb the fragile tension between them. Charles didn't answer. And just called for Chipo.
"I might have something before bed." Charles let the coat fall off his shoulders, and without stopping, passed her into the kitchen.
"It's late, Charles," she said when he had gone through the doorway. He deposited their coats over the back of a chair and sat down, legs falling open, tired, leaning heavily against the back, resting his hand so casually on the inside of his thigh. Mary swallowed.
"Yes." Charles said. And before Mary had passed under the doorframe, he continued: "I really do respect you, you know, and I respect every damned fool thing you do or did."
Except Trujillo. The words went unspoken but they were there. And Mary remembered what he had told her at the time, the words branded into her consciousness: "No man can respect a massacre, Mary. It's too rough. Too recent. You can't expect the world to accept it— no matter what pain you were in."
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone