Mosaic Page 17
Of Botha, devious and carping, a man of infinite guile and no greatness, whose rule would be un-tempered now by the prospect of De Witte returning to claim his desk and file his understudy away where he would be harmless.
Of the English girl, the naked girl he had seen only once, and her calm faith in Grant.
Of Grant himself, still an enigma, an eternal hung Christ pierced through at intervals by the sharpness of other people’s ambitions.
Of the black man who could have saved him except that the urbane, ubiquitous civilization of the corrupt old world into which he had come had slid into his soul unnoticed and stayed his hand when a moment of African strength would have ended the thing.
Of the white man, by no standards a warrior, who should have been finished four times over by a broken arm but fought back the pain long enough to deliver his piece of the picture that finally made sense of all the bits that would not fit.
Of the young man from Carver’s army and his unattractive proposition.
But mostly of De Witte. De Witte had always inspired a fierce loyalty and genuine affection in his officers, and in return had supported and protected them to the best of his considerable ability. He was one of the last—perhaps the last—of a dying race of giants. Behind the amiable bland face Vanderbilt was grieving for him.
He wondered how much he had known. That they wanted to give him a new heart, probably: he would have welcomed a new lease of life. But that that heart belonged to a living, viable man? Vanderbilt did not believe that De Witte would have sanctioned it. It had the particularly nose-curling stink of Botha’s brand of ruthlessness. De Witte was ruthless too but not like that, never like that. And when he found out, certainly about the heart and probably about the donor too, he stopped it. He stopped it dead.
One by one the four Bristol engines broke into life, the propellers turning at first as if hand-cranked, only afterwards dissolving into a blur of their own speed. The ageing aeroplane, like a dowager in a bathchair, trundled past the buildings towards the runway. This early in the morning there was no queue: the tower directed the Hastings to the top end of the runway. Like a dowager pushed by an athletic footman the plane taxied downwind and turned her face back briefly towards the Mediterranean. Kane put on his brakes, made his final checks and ran his engines up.
Under cover of the burgeoning sound and vibration, Vanderbilt threw open the passenger door in the big hatchway. He kicked the crate over, dragging Grant—somnolent, mumbling—out mostly by his hair. He cast sharp glances forward and aft, but no one was watching: the tower was half a mile ahead and on the blind side. Grant’s hands were finally free: Vanderbilt used one to haul him to the door and manhandle him through it, lowering his limp body some of the several feet to the tarmac. When he let go Grant dropped inert, a shapeless heap on the ground dressed in another man’s clothes stained with another man’s blood.
The engine noise dropped back to a lower, throatier rumble. The aeroplane strained for the sky. Either unaware of the open door or deliberately ignoring it, Kane snapped the brakes off.
As the aircraft took that first abrupt stride towards freedom, the dowager suddenly lifting her skirts and bounding from her chair like a sprinter, Vanderbilt finally cast his vote. He followed his prisoner out of the hatch, hit the ground face down and rolled over once, and the broad expanse of the tailplane rushed over his head.
Copyright
First published in 1986 by Hale
This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world
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Copyright © Jo Bannister, 1986
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