"Quite right, Uncle Bawu, I'll remember that." Craig felt safe to leave him for ten minutes, sure that the old man's opinions of the British Labour government were good for at least that long, and he made his way swiftly through the crowds to where Janine's parents stood with a small group at the end of the veranda.
He insinuated himself unobtrusively into the circle, and studied Janine's mother out of the corner of his eye. It gave him a hollow aching feeling to recognize the same features, the jawline and deep forehead blurred only marginally by the passage of time. She had the same slanted eyes with the same appealing cat-like cast to them. She caught his gaze and smiled at him.
"Mrs. Carpenter, I'm a good friend of Janine's. My name is Craig Mellow." "Oh yes, Jan wrote about you in her letters." Her smile was warm, and her voice had haunting echoes of her daughter's. Craig found himself babbling away to her, and could not prevent it until softly and compassionately she said. "She told me you were such a nice person.
I am sorry, I truly am." "I don't understand?" Craig stiffened. "You love her very much, don't you!" He stared at her miserably, unable to reply, and she touched his arm in understanding.
"Excuse me," he blurted. "Roland will be ready to dress, I must go." He stumbled and almost fell on, the veranda steps. "By God, Sonny, where have you been? I thought you were going to let me go into contact on my own," Roland shouted from the shower. "Have you got the ring?" They waited side by side, under the bower of fresh flowers in front of the makeshift altar which also was smothered with flowers.
Roland wore full-dress uniform. the maroon beret with Bazo's head cap-badge, the colonel's crowns on his shoulders, the silver cross for valour on his breast, white gloves on his hands and the gilt and tasselled sword at his waist.
In his simple police uniform, Craig felt gauche and drab, like a sparrow beside a golden eagle, like a tabby cat beside a leopard, and the waiting seemed to go on for ever. Through it all, Craig clung to a hopeless notion that it was still not going to happen that was the only way he could hold his despair at bay.
Then there was the triumphant swell of the bridal march, and down both sides of the carpeted aisle from the house, the crowds stirred and hummed with excitement and anticipation. Craig felt his soul begin the final plunge into cold and darkness, he could not bring himself to look around. He stared straight ahead at the face of the priest. He had known him since childhood, but now he seemed a stranger, his face swam and wavered in Craig's vision.
Then he smelled Janine, even over the scent of the altar flowers he recognized her perfume, and he almost choked on the memories it evoked. He felt the train of her dress brush against his ankle, and he moved back slightly and turned so that he could see her for the last time.
She was on her father's arm. The veil covered her hair, and misted her face, but beneath its soft folds, he could see her eyes, those great slanted eyes, the dark indigo of a tropical sea, shining softly as she looked up at Roland Ballantyne.
"Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this church, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony-" Now Craig could not take his eyes from her face. She had never looked so lovely. She wore a crown of fresh Violets, the exact colour of her eyes. He still hoped that it would not happen, that something would prevent it.
"Therefore if any man can show any just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak-" He wanted to call out, to stop it. He wanted to shout, "I love her, she is mine," but his throat was so dry and painful that he could not draw breath enough through it. Then, it was happening.
"I, Roland Morris, take thee, Janine Elizabeth, to have and to hold from this day forward-" Roly's voice was clear and strong and it raked Craig's soul to its very depths. After that, nothing else mattered. Craig seemed to be standing a little away from it all, as though all the laughter and joy was on the other side of a glass partition, the voices were strangely muted, even the light seemed dulled as though a cloud had passed across the sun.
He watched from the back of the crowd, standing under the jacaranda trees, while Janine came out onto the veranda still carrying her bouquet Of violets, dressed in her blue going-away ensemble. She and Roland were still hand in hand, but now he lifted her onto a table-top and there were feminine shrieks of excitement as Janine poised to toss her bouquet.
In that moment, she looked over their heads, and saw Craig. The smile stayed on her lovely wide mouth, but something moved in her eyes, a dark shadow, perhaps of pity, perhaps even regret, then she threw the bouquet, one of her bridesmaids caught it, and Roland swept her down and away. Hand in hand, the two of them ran down the lawns to where the helicopter waited with its rotor already turning. They ran laughing, Janine clutching her wide brimmed straw hat, and Roland trying to shield her from the storm of confetti that swirled around them.
Craig did not wait for the machine to bear them away. He returned to where he had left the old Land-rover at the back of the stables. He drove back to the yacht. He stripped off his uniform, threw it onto the bunk, and pulled on a pair of silk jogging shorts. He went into the galley and from the refrigerator hooked out a can of beer. Sipping the froth, he went back into the saloon. A loner all his life, he had believed himself immune to the tortures of loneliness, and now he knew he had been mistaken.
By this time there was a stack of over fifty exercise books upon the saloon table, each of them filled from cover to cover with his pencilled scrawl. He sat down and selected a pencil from the bunch stuck into an empty coffee mug like porcupine quills. He began to write, and slowly the corrosive agony of loneliness receded and became merely a slow dull ache.
On Monday morning, when Craig walked into police headquarters, on his way through to the armoury, the member-in-charge called him into his office.
"Craig, I've got movement papers for you. You are being detached on special assignment." What is it?" "Hell, I don't know. I just work here. Nobody tells me anything, but you are ordered to report to the area commander, Wankie, on twenty-eighth-" The inspector broke off and studied Craig's face. "Are you feeling okay, Craig?" "Yes, why do you ask?" "You are looking bloody awful." He considered for a few moments. "I tell you what, if you sneak away from here on the twenty-fifth, you could give yourself a couple of days" break before reporting to your new assignment." "You are the only star in my firmament, George." Craig grinned lopsidedly, and thought to himself, "That's all I need, three days with nothing to do but feel sorry for myself." The Victoria Falls Hotel is one of those magnificent monuments to the great days of Empire. Its walls are as thick as those of a castle, but painted brilliant white. The floors are of marble, with sweeping staircases and colonnaded porticos, the ceilings are cathedral-high with fancy plaster-work and gently revolving fans. The terraces and lawns stretch down to the very brink of the aby's through which the Zambezi river boils in all its fury and grandeur, Spanning the gorge is the delicate steel tracery of the arched bridge of which Cecil Rhodes ordered, "I want the spray from the falls to wet my train as it passes on its way to the north." The spray hangs in a perpetual snowy mantle over the chasm, twisting and folding upon itself as the breeze picks at it, and always there is the muted thunder of falling water like the sound of storm surf heard from afar.