When the Lion Feeds Read online

  He stubbed his toe and it started to bleed, but he kept on upwards.

  There was a dead tree on the edge of the bush that Sean had used to mark the bushbuck’s hide. Sean climbed above it and stopped just below the crest of the slope where the moving grass would break up the silhouette of his head on the skyline. He was panting. He found a rock the size of a beer barrel to use as a rest for the gun, and he crouched behind it. He laid the stock of the gun on the rock, aimed back down the hill and traversed the barrels left and right to make sure his field of fire was clear. He iMAgined the bushbuck running in his sights and he felt excitement shiver along his forearms, across his shoulders and up the back of his neck. I won’t lead on him, he’ll be moving fairly slowly, trotting most probably. I’ll go straight at his shoulders, he whispered.

  He opened the gun, took the two cartridges out of his shirt pocket, slid them into the breeches and snapped the gun closed. It took all the strength of both his hands to pull back the big fancy hammers, but he managed it and the gun was double-loaded and cocked. He laid it on the rock in front of him again and stared down the slope. On his left the gulley was a dark-green smear on the hillside, directly below him was open grass where the bushbuck would cross. He pushed impatiently at the hair on his forehead: it was damp with sweat and stayed up out of his eyes.

  The minutes drifted by.

  rWhat the hell is Garry doing? He’s so stupid sometimes! Sean muttered and almost in answer he heard Garrick shout below him. It was a small sound, far down the slope and muffled by the bush. Tinker barked once without enthusiasm; he was also Sulking, he didn’t like the chain. Sean waited with his forefinger on one trigger, staring down at the edge of the bush. Garrick shouted again, and the bushbuck broke from cover.

  it came fast into the open with its nose up and its long horns held flat against its back. Sean moved his body sideways swinging the gun with its run, riding the pip of the foresight on its black shoulder. He fired the left barrel and the recoil threw him off balance; his ears hummed with the shot and the burnt powder smoke blew back into his face.

  He struggled to his feet still holding the gun. The bushbuck was down in the grass, bleating like a lamb and kicking as it died. I got him, screamed Sean. I got him first shot! Garry, Garry! I got him, I got him! Tinker came pelting out of the bush dragging Garry behind him by the chain and, still screaming, Sean ran down to join them. A stone rolled under his foot and he fell. The shotgun flew out of his hand and the second barrel fired. The sound of the explosion was very loud.

  When Sean scrambled onto his feet again Garrick was sitting in the grass whimpering,-whimpering and staring at his leg. The blast of the shotgun had smashed into it and churned the flesh below the knee into tatters, bursting it open so the bone chips showed white in the wound and the blood pumped dark and strong and thick as custard. I didn’t mean it.... Oh God, Garry, I didn’t mean it. I slipped. Honest, I slipped.

  Sean was staring at the leg also. There was no colour in his face, his eyes were big and dark with horror. The blood pumped out onto the grass.

  Stop it bleeding! Sean, please stop it. Oh, it’s sore Oh! Sean, please stop it. Sean stumbled across to him. He wanted to vomit.

  He unbuckled his belt and strapped it round the leg and the blood was warm and sticky On his hands. He used his sheathed knife to twist the belt tight. The pumping slowed and he twisted harder. Oh, Sean, it’s sore! It’s sore. Garrick’s face was waxy-white and he was starting to shiver as the cold hand of shock closed on him. I’ll get Joseph, Sean stammered. We’ll come back quickly as we can. Oh, God, I’m sorry! Sean jumped up and ran. He fell, rolled to his feet and kept running.

  They came within an hour. Sean was leading three of the Zulu servants.

  Joseph, the cook, had brought a blanket. He wrapped Garrick and lifted him and Garrick fainted as his leg swung loosely. As they started back down the hill, Sean looked out across the flats: there was a little puff of dust on the Lady-burg road. One Of the grooms was riding to fetch Waite Courtney.

  They were waiting on the veranda of the homestead when Waite Courtney, came back to Theunis Kraal. Garrick was conscious again. He lay on the couch: his face was white and the blood had soaked through the blanket.

  There was blood on Joseph’s uniform and blood had dried black on Sean’s hands. Waite Courtney ran up onto the veranda; he stooped over Garrick and drew back the blanket. For a second he stood staring at the leg and then very gently he covered it again.

  Waite lifted Garrick and carried him down to the buggy.

  Joseph went with him and they settled Garrick on the back seat. Joseph held his body and Garrick’s stepmother took the leg on her lap to stop it twisting. Waite Courtney climbed quickly into the driver’s seat: he picked up the reins, then he turned his head and looked at Sean still Standing on the veranda. He didn’t speak, but his eyes were terrible, Sean 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 it. 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 ge
t 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. During the day Ada had the running of a large household and there were fifteen thousand acres of land and two thousand head of cattle that needed Waite’s attention. That was the loneliest time for Garrick. if it had not been for the books, he . might not have been able to bear it. He read everything that Ada brought to him: Stevenson, Swift, Defoe, Dickens and even Shakespeare. Much of it he didn’t understand, but he read hungrily and the Opium Of the printed word helped him through the long days until Sean came home each Friday.

  When Sean came home it was like a big wind blowing through the house.

  Doors slammed, dogs barked, servants scolded and feet clattered up and down the passages. Most of the noise was Sean’s, but not all of it.

  There were Sean’s followers: youngsters from his class at the village school.

  They accepted Sean’s authority as willingly as did Garrick, and it was not only Sean’s fists that won this acceptance but also the laughter and the sense of excitement that went with him. They came out to Theunis Kraal in droves that summer, sometimes as many as three on one bare-backed pony: sitting like a row of sparrows on a fence rail. They came for the added attraction of Garry’s stump.

  Sean was very proud of it. That’s where the doc sewed it up, pointing to the row of stitch marks along the pink fold of scar tissue. Can I touch it, man? Not too hard or it’ll burst open.

  Garrick had never received attention like this in his life before. He beamed round the
circle of solemn, wide-eyed faces. It feels funny, sort of hot. Was it sore? How did he chop the bone, with an axe? No.

  Sean was the only one in a position to answer technical questions of this nature. With a saw. just like a piece of wood. He made the motions with his open hand.

  But even this fascinating subject couldn’t hold them for long and presently there would be a restlessness amongst them. Hey, Sean, Karl and I know where there’s a nest of squawkers, you wanta have a look? or Let’s go and catch frogs, and Garrick would cut in desperately.

  You can have a look at my stamp collection if you like.

  It’s in the cupboard there. Now, we saw it last week. Let’s go. This was when Ada, who had been listening to the conversation through the open kitchen door, brought in the food. Koeksusters fried in honey, chocolate cakes with peppermint icing, watermelon konfyt and half a dozen other delicacies.

  She knew they wouldn’t leave until it was finished and she knew also that there’d be upset stomachs when it was, but that was preferable to Garrick lying alone and listening to the others riding off into the hills.

  The weekends were short, gone in a breathless blur.

  Another long week began for Garrick. There were eight of them, eight dreary weeks before Doctor Van Rooyen agreed to let him sit out on the veranda during the day.

  Then suddenly the prospect of being well again became a reality for Garrick. The leg that Waite was making was nearly finished: he shaped a leather bucket to take the stump and fitted it to the wood with flat-headed copper nails; he worked carefully, moulding the leather and adjusting the straps that would hold it in place. Meanwhile, Garrick exercised along the veranda, hopping beside Ada with an Arm around her shoulder, his jaws clenched with concentration and the freckles very prominent on his face that had been without the sun for so long. Twice a day Ada sat on a cushion in front of Garrick’s chair and massaged the stump with methylated spirits to toughen it for its first contact with the stiff leather bucket. I bet old Sean will be surprised, hey? When he sees me walking around. Everyone will, Ada agreed. She looked up from his leg and smiled. Can’t I try it now? Then I can go out fishing with him when he comes on Saturday. You mustn’t expect too much, Garry, it’s not going to be easy at first. You will have to learn to use it.