The Dark Of The Sun by Wilbur Smith
“I don’t like the idea,” announced Wally Hendry, and belched. He moved his tongue round his mouth getting the taste of it before he went on. “I think the whole idea stinks like a ten-day corpse.” He lay sprawled on one of the beds with a glass balanced on his naked chest
and he was sweating heavily in the Congo heat.
“Unfortunately your opinion doesn’t alter the fact that we are going.” Bruce Curry went on laying out his shaving tackle without looking up.
“You shoulda told them to keep it, told them we were staying here in Elisabethville, - why didn’t you tell them that, hey?” o Hendry picked up his glass and swallowed the contents.
“Because they pay me not to argue.” Bruce spoke without interest and looked at himself in the fly-spotted mirror above the washbasin.
The face that looked back was sundarkened with a cap of close-cropped black hair; soft hair that would be unruly and inclined to curl if it were longer.
Black eyebrows slanting upwards at the corners, green eyes with a heavy fringe of lashes and a mouth which could smile as readily as it
could sulk. Bruce regarded his good looks without pleasure. It was a long time since he had felt that emotion, a long time since his mouth had either smiled or sulked. He did not feel the old tolerant affection for his nose, the large slightly hooked nose that rescued his face from prettiness and gave him the air of a genteel pirate.
“Jesus!” growled Wally Hendry from the bed. “I’ve had just about a gutsful of this nigger army. I don’t mind fighting but I don’t fancy going hundreds of miles out into the bush to play nursemaid to a bunch of bloody refugees.”
“It’s a hell of a life,” agreed Bruce absently and spread shaving-soap on his face. The lather was very white against his tan. Under a skin that glowed so healthily that it appeared to have been freshly oiled, the muscles of his
shoulders and chest changed shape as he moved. He was in good
condition, fitter than he had been for many years, but this fact gave him no more pleasure than had his face.
“Get me another drink, Andre.” Wally Hendry thrust his empty glass into the hand of the man who sat on the edge of the bed.
The Belgian stood up and went across to the table obediently.
“More whisky and less beer in this one,” Wally instructed, turned once more to Bruce and belched again. “That’s what I think of the idea.” As Andre poured Scotch whisky into the glass and filled it with beer Wally hitched around the pistol in its webbing holster until it hung between his legs.
“When are we leaving?” he asked.
“There’ll be an engine and five coaches at the goods yard first thing tomorrow morning. We’ll load up and get going as soon as possible.” Bruce started to shave, drawing the razor down from temple to chin and leaving the skin smooth and brown behind it.
“After three months of” fighting a bunch of greasy little Gurkhas
I was looking forward to a bit of fun. - I haven’t even had a pretty in all that time - now the second day after the ceasefire and they ship us out again.”
“C’est laguerre,” muttered Bruce, his face twisted in the
act of shaving.
“What’s that mean?” demanded Wally suspiciously.
“That’s war,” Bruce translated.
“Talk English, Bucko.” It was the measure of Wally Hendry that after six months
in the Belgian Congo he could neither speak nor understand a
single word of French.
There was silence again, broken only by the scraping of Bruce’s razor and the small metallic sound as the fourth man in the hotel room stripped and cleaned his FN rifle.
“Have a drink, Haig,” Wally invited him.
“No, thanks.” Michael Haig glanced up, not trying to conceal his distaste as he looked at Wally.
“You’re another snotty bastard - don’t want to drink with me, hey?
Even the high-class Captain Curry is drinking with me. What makes you so goddam special?”
“You know that I don’t drink.” Haig turned his attention back to his weapon, handling it with easy familiarity. For
all of them the ugly automatic rifles had become an extension of their own bodies. Even while shaving Bruce had only to drop his hand to reach the rifle propped against the wall, and the two men on the bed had theirs on the floor beside them.
“You don’t drink!” chuckled Wally. “Then how did you get that
complexion, Bucko? How come your nose looked like a ripe plum?” Haig’s mouth tightened and the hands on his rifle stilled.
“Cut it out, Wally,” said Bruce without heat.
“Haig don’t drink,” crowed Wally, and dug the little Belgian in the ribs with his thumb, “get that, Andre! He’s a tee-bloody-total!
My old man was a tee total also; sometimes for two, three months at a
time he was tee total, and then he’d come home one night and sock the old lady in the clock so you could hear her teeth rattle from across the street.” His laughter choked him and he had to wait for it to clear before he went on.
“My bet is that you’re that kind of tee total, Haig. One drink and you wake up ten days later; that’s it, isn’t it?
One drink and - pow! - the old girl gets it in the chops and the kids don’t eat for a couple of weeks.” Haig laid the rifle down carefully on the bed and looked at Wally with his jaws clenched, but
Wally had not noticed.
He went on happily.
“Andre, take the whisky bottle and hold it under Old Teetotal
Haig’s nose. Let’s watch him slobber at the mouth and his eyes stand out like a pair of dog’s balls.” Haig stood up. Twice the age of Wally - a man in his middle fifties, with grey in his hair and the refinement of his features not completely obliterated by the marks that life had left upon them. He had arms like a boxer and a powerful set to his shoulders. “It’s about time YOU learned a few manners, Hendry. Get on your feet.”
“You wanta dance or something? I don’t waltz, - ask
Andre. He’ll dance with you - won’t you, Andre?” Haig was balanced on the balls of his feet, his hands closed and raised slightly. Bruce
Curry placed his razor on the shelf above the basin, and moved quietly
round the table with soap still on his face to take up a position from which he could intervene. There he waited, watching the two men.
“Get up, you filthy gutter-snipe.”
“Hey, Andre, get that. He talks pretty, hey? He talks real pretty
“I’m going to smash that ugly face of yours right into the middle of the place where your brain should have been.”
“Jokes! This boy is a natural comic.” Wally laughed, but there was something wrong with . the sound of it. Bruce knew then that Wally was not going to fight. Big arms and swollen chest covered
with ginger hair, belly flat and hard, looking, thick-necked below the wide flat-featured face with its little Mongolian eyes; but Wally wasn’t going to fight.
Bruce was puzzled: he remembered the night at the road bridge and he knew that Hendry was no coward, and yet now he was not going to take up Haig’s challenge.
Mike Haig moved towards the bed.
“Leave him, Mike.” Andre spoke for the first time, his voice soft as a girl’s. “He was only joking. He didn’t mean it
“Hendry, don’t think I’m too much of a gentleman to hit you because you’re on your back. Don’t make that mistake.”
“Big deal,” muttered Wally. “This boy’s not only a comic, he’s a bloody hero also.” Haig stood over him and lifted his right hand with the fist, bunched like a hammer, aimed at Wally’s face.
“Haig!” Bruce hadn’t raised his voice but its tone checked the older man.
“That’s enough, said Bruce.
“But this filthy little-“
“Yes, I know,” said Bruce. “Leave him!”