Present Darkness (59 page)

Jason took a bucket from the younger maid and said, “Julie’s out bush with her kaffir pals. It will take me the whole afternoon to haul enough water for a bath. The others won’t help. They run off whenever there’s work to be done.”

“You’re the man of the house now.” Delia opened the oven and peered inside with a distracted air. “The others are still children. You have to lead them. Teach them the right way to do things.”

Small chance of that, Emmanuel thought. The younger Singleton children were happy hanging from tree branches and playing in the fields. They’d never give up their freedom for farm work. Shabalala stepped closer to the table and caught the older maid’s attention. She narrowed her dark eyes and regarded the tall Zulu and his white companions with suspicion. Shabalala smiled and gestured to the bucket in Jason’s hand, then held up three fingers to make a silent request for three more. To make a verbal request of a white woman’s servant would be inappropriate.

The maid ducked under the table and produced two more wooden pails with rope handles. She handed them to Shabalala with an expression that said, “I’m not impressed with your suit or your white friends but thanks for helping with the water.”

“Come,” Jason said and skirted the table on the way to the back door. Once outside, they followed a trampled grass path that ran along the edge of the slimy swimming pool. Further along, they passed three elderly black men crouched in the shade of a yellowwood tree. A young woman in traditional dress breastfed an infant a few yards to their right. The small gathering looked to the back door of the farmhouse with stoic expressions.

“My father used to meet people under this tree to discuss their problems,” Jason said. “People from the farm and the native reserve still come here, even though my mother stays in the house and won’t talk to them. They still wait for her. ”

The men called out greetings and the young mother dipped her head to acknowledge the passing of three European males and a tall native who must also be shown deference. Emmanuel suspected that the patience shown by the group would be wasted. Delia was barely hanging on. She had no time for them or their complaints.

They meandered through a cornfield and down to the banks of a clear river embedded with white, marbled boulders. Flowering bulrushes grew thick and wild by the water’s edge. Downstream, a muscular black woman scrubbed laundry on a rock while three naked children splashed in the shallows. No sign of Cassie, though.

“She’s normally right there.” Jason pointed to a smooth rock ledge jutting out into the water: the perfect spot to dangle your toes in the flow. “That’s her favourite place to sit. She cries a lot.”

“She has just lost her father. Perhaps she has good reason for tears,” Zweigman said.

“No, that’s not the reason.” Jason dipped his bucket into the river and filled it to the brim. “She cried from the first day she got here.”

“Any idea where she could have gone?” Emmanuel asked. Flat country spread out under blue sky. The Singleton farm likely stretched for miles with the horizon shifting ever further away with each step into the inhospitable veldt.

“She’ll be back before long,” Jason said and wrestled the heavy bucket onto his shoulder like a native porter carting goods from a supply train. “She hates the country so she can’t have gone too far.”

In what direction? A sensible city-bred teenager would stay close to shelter and a source of water. Emmanuel shaded his eyes and searched through the heat haze on the plains. He did not feel especially confident of Cassie’s level-headedness.

Shabalala set the buckets down and walked across the sand to the flat rock. He crouched and scanned the riverbank. “A girl wearing sandals left from this place many hours ago.”

“When did you see Cassie last?” Emmanuel asked her cousin who swayed with the effort of keeping the overflowing water bucket balanced on his shoulder.

“Breakfast,” Jason said. “She ate half her porridge and left in a hurry.”

“Go and find her,” Zweigman urged. A city girl wandering the bush alone for hours rang a warning for all three of them. “I will use the time to rinse the infection from the children’s eyes. Milk and honey will clear it up.”

The doctor picked up the empty buckets and stooped by the water’s edge, his energies shifting to the inhabitants of Clearwater homestead in need of his care.

“One hour.” Emmanuel agreed: he and Shabalala would track Cassie across the veldt and Zweigman would tend the children. “If she stayed close to water we might be away longer than that.”

He nodded to Shabalala who tilted his hat in farewell and walked along the riverbank with quick strides. He crouched again by the rock and examined the sand and twigs nearby. Zweigman and Jason retraced the grass path to the homestead, their steps slowed to compensate for the weight of their buckets.

“The boy is right. His cousin came here many times to sit at this place. This morning she stayed and then moved in that direction.” The Zulu detective pointed along the crooked spine of the river to a point beyond where the washerwoman lathered soap onto a scrubbing brush.

“At least she’s got sense enough to stick close to water,” Emmanuel said and fell into step with Shabalala. Silver light refracted off the farmhouse roof. If Cassie were lost, that wink of civilisation could act as a beacon, drawing her homeward.

“Have you seen the young white missus?” Emmanuel stopped to ask the washerwoman who scrubbed away at worn cotton sheets. A hint as to Cassie’s state of mind would be helpful. The woman looked up, glad for the break.

“The sad one was here when I came with my first load,
ma baas
. I greeted her but she turned her face away from me. When the children came to play in the water she got up and ran away; quick, quick, past the bulrushes and then on till I could not see her any more.”

“My thanks.” Emmanuel caught up with Shabalala on a bend in the river. Cassie had taken off long before they’d arrived at Clearwater with their questions. What reason did she have for running?

“The girl moved fast and then rested here against the tree trunk.” The Zulu detective indicated a hollow in the sand and tracked the soft scoops left in the riverbank by Cassie’s sandals. A few minutes later they came to another dip in the sand where the teenager had again sat down to rest.

“She runs and stops. Runs and stops, yet there is nothing chasing her,” Shabalala said when they’d tracked her long enough to establish a pattern. On the opposite bank a tall boy drove a herd of cattle down to the river. The sun blazed hot. Shabalala and Emmanuel removed their ties and jackets, rolled up their sleeves and wet their heads and faces with handfuls of cool water. They moved on.

Ten minutes later they came to a trampled patch of grass stained with drops of dried brown liquid. Shabalala rubbed the substance between thumb and forefinger to confirm what they both already knew.

“Blood. Only a small amount and just dry …”

Emmanuel stepped back to get a clearer view of the area. A hard object crunched underfoot. He kneeled down and lifted a black-handled steak knife from the grass. Rust-brown liquid stained the serrated blade. White noise roared in his ears. Cassie held the key to open Aaron’s jail cell. Unless she retracted her statement, Lieutenant Mason’s tainted evidence would make it to trial. Her life was precious, yet she’d decided to throw it away. He turned a quick circle, searching for a body, and realised that the roaring sound in his head had an external source.

“A waterfall,” Shabalala said and loped off. Emmanuel matched his pace. They rounded a sharp bend. Five feet ahead the land dropped away and the river plunged over the edge of a steep cliff. Cassie stood on the lip of the precipice with her arms pressed close to her sides.

“No …” the word came out short and strangled from Shabalala’s throat.

“Wait!” Emmanuel shouted over the crash of falling water. He sprinted to close the gap with the lonely figure balanced on the edge of the cliff.

Cassie jumped.

23.

Emmanuel hit the water. His left shoulder bounced against a submerged boulder and pain tore through his body; sharp and dull at the same time. The force of the cascading river pushed him down to the bottom of the deep pool at the base of the falls. Bubbles escaped from his mouth as the impact pushed all the air out of his body. His left arm hung useless by his side. The world spun in a dark swirl of leaves, sand and silt. He kicked hard toward the surface. The sheer weight of the falling water held him down. He tried again, right arm extended to its maximum length to search for a finger-hold above the surface. A hand gripped his wrist and pulled him up to the light. Shabalala, soaked to the skin and hatless, tread water just outside the impact zone.

“Cassie?” Emmanuel shouted over the roar of the water and tasted mud and algae in his mouth. He and Shabalala had jumped over the edge together, falling like leaf litter into the pool.

“I will find her.” The Zulu detective dived down through the white spray and disappeared into the churning water. Emmanuel clung to a craggy rock ledge, his teeth gritted against the pain of bruised muscles and what felt like a dislocated shoulder. The last he’d seen of Cassie Brewer was a bright flash of her red hair and a white hand sinking out of view.

“Don’t black out just yet, soldier. If anyone can get the girl out, it’s the Zulu,”
the Scottish Sergeant Major said.
“He’ll find her.”

“Dead or alive?”

“That’s out of our hands. All we can do is pray … even though you and I know there’s no-one listening.”

Minutes later Shabalala broke the surface of the water and scissor-kicked out of the foaming spray. Pale limbs thrashed in his wake as he dragged Cassie Brewer to the side of the pool and propped her body against the rocky edge. She spat up brown sludge and moaned low in the back of her throat.

Emmanuel moved around the edge of the pool, clinging to the bank with his right hand. Shabalala sucked in great mouthfuls of air and held Cassie afloat despite the effort he’d expended dragging her up from the bottom.

“Climb out,” Emmanuel said. “I’ll keep her above the surface.”

Shabalala brought himself out of the water in one graceful push, then crouched in the sand. He took two deep breaths and exhaled slowly, focusing on dragging the white girl’s dead weight over the edge of the pool and onto the riverbank.

“I’ll push. You lift.” Emmanuel braced against the rocky bottom and wedged his good shoulder under Cassie’s body. She coughed up a twig and her eyes flew open, wide and panicked. “Now.”

“
Woza …
” Shabalala breathed the Zulu exhortation, which meant “go, get up, move.” Workmen all over the country used the word to give them extra power when their energy had drained. The Zulu reached down and fit his hands under Cassie’s armpits and then applied the full measure of his strength to pull her from the pool. Emmanuel pressed upward, ignoring the pain that stabbed across his shoulder and into his neck. Cassie’s body lifted and then sloshed over the rock edge like a fish on a hook. Emmanuel heard retching and hiccups. Shabalala appeared again at the pool’s perimeter.

“Give me your hands, Sergeant. I will pull you out.”

“Can’t,” he said. “Hit a rock on the way in. Hurt my shoulder.”

“I see …” Shabalala peered into the water and pointed to a boulder wedged hard into the rock wall. “Come over here. Climb on. I will lift you onto the bank.”

Emmanuel stepped onto the curved rock and grabbed a tuft of straggly grass to keep balance. Shabalala took hold of his good arm and pulled back slowly. The muscles of both Emmanuel’s right and left shoulders ached and flexed. He pushed up hard through the water and Shabalala dragged him over the lip of the rock and onto the coarse sand. Cassie Brewer lay a few feet away, curled into a tight ball, shaking.

Emmanuel flipped onto his back, jaw clenched tight. “You’ll have to push my shoulder back into its socket,” he told Shabalala. “I’ll tell you how but it might take a couple of tries.”

He had limited experience in readjusting dislocated shoulders having done it only once before and under the instruction of an injured field medic who’d tripped over on an empty ammo box and refused to wait for trained help to arrive.

“One of you’ll have to fix my shoulder,” the medic had said to the squad. “I’ll guide you through.”

Emmanuel volunteered. Medics saved lives. They brought morphine to the injured and carried the shot, the burned and the shell-shocked to safety. One medic down translated to multiple losses on the battlefield. He’d snapped the shoulder back into place under a barrage of enemy fire. Now, lying on a peaceful African riverbank, he hoped he remembered the right steps in the right order.

“Bend my shoulder at a ninety-degree angle and rotate my arm to my chest. Good. That’s it …” he stopped and thought through the next stage; drops of sweat and river water forming on his brow. “All right. Now move the arm outward and try to coax the bone back into the socket.”

Shabalala followed the final instructions and deftly eased the dislocated bone back into its socket. Relief came instantly, though the bruised muscle would take days to heal.

“Thanks. You got it first time.” Emmanuel slowly rotated his shoulder, testing the movement of the joint. The bone stayed in place. He got up and walked over to where Cassie lay curled on the sand. She had red scratches on her wrists and forearms from where she had tried to cut herself with the steak knife.