Rage - Smith Wilbur - Страница 30
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For once Kitty took no part in the conversation, and she sat morosely at the end of the table, nibbling without interest at the hearty Teutonic fare and occasionally darting a sulky glance at Shasa.
David skipped coffee to go and make his nightly phone call to Matty and the children, and Hank and his crew had been told of a local night spot with hot music and even hotter hostesses.
'Ten days with no feminine company except the boss,' Hank complained. 'My nerves need soothing." 'Remember where you are,' Shasa warned him. 'In this country black velvet is royal game." 'Some of the poohtang I've seen today would be worth five years' hard labour,' Hank leered.
'Did you know that we have a South African version of Russian roulette?" Shasa asked him. 'What you do is take a coloured girl into a telephone booth. Then you phone the police flying squad and see who comes first." Kitty was the only one who didn't laugh, and Shasa stood up.
'I've got some papers to go over. We'll save the farewells until breakfast." In his suite he shaved and showered quickly, then slipped on a silk dressing-gown. As he went through to check that there was ice in the bar, there was a light tap on the door of the suite.
Kitty stood on the threshold looking tragic.
'Am I disturbing you?" 'No, of course not." He held the door open and she crossed the lounge and stood staring out of the window.
'Can I get you a night-cap?" Shasa asked.
'What are you drinking?" she asked.
'A rusty nail." 'I'll have one also - whatever it is." While he mixed Drambuie and malt whisky, she said, 'I came to thank you for everything you've done for me these last ten days. It's going to be hard to say goodbye." He carried the glasses across to where she stood in the middle of the floor, but when he reached her she took both glasses from him and placed them on the coffee table. Then she stood on tiptoe, slid both arms around his neck and turned her face up for his kiss.
Her lips were soft and sweet as warm chocolate, and slowly she pushed her tongue deeply into his mouth. When at last their mouths parted with a little wet sucking sound, he stooped and hooked an arm around the back of her knees and lifted her against his chest.
She clung to him, pressing her face against his throat as he carried her through to the bedroom.
She had the lean hips and flat belly of a boy, and her buttocks were white and round and hard as a pair of ostrich eggs. Like her face, her body seemed childlike and immature except for those tight little pear-shaped breasts and the startling burst of thick dark hair at the base of her belly, but when he touched her there he found to his surprise that it was fine as silk and soft as smoke.
Her love-making was so artful as to seem totally uncontrived and spontaneous. She had the trick of telling him exactly what he was doing to her in the coarsest barnyard terms, and the obscenities on that soft innocent-looking mouth were shockingly erotic. She took him to those heights that he had seldom scaled before, and left him completely satiated.
In the dawn glow she snuggled against him and whispered, 'I don't know how I am going to be able to bear being parted from you after this." He could see her face in the wall mirror across the room, although she was unaware of his scrutiny."Damn it - I can't let you go,' he whispered back. 'I don't care what it costs I'm taking you down to the Sperrgebiet with me." In the mirror he watched her smile, a complacent and smug little smile. He had been correct, Kitty Godolphin used her sexual favours like trumps in a game of bridge.
At the airport her crew were packing their equipment into the Dove under David Abrahams' supervision when Shasa and Kitty drove up in the second company car, and Kitty jumped out and went to David.
'How are you going to work it, Davie?" she asked, and he looked puzzled.
'I don't understand the question." 'You'll have to fake the flight plan, won't you?" Kitty insisted.
Still mystified, David glanced at Shasa. Shasa shrugged and Kitty became exasperated.
'You know very well what I mean. How are you going to cover the fact that we are going into the Sperrgebiet without permits?" 'Without permits?" David echoed, and fished a handful of documents out of the zip pocket of his leather flying-jacket. 'Here are the permits. They were issued a week ago - all kosher and correct." Kitty wheeled and glared speechlessly at Shasa, but he refused to meet her eyes and instead ambled off to make his walk-around check of the Mosquito.
They didn't speak to each other again until Shasa had the Mosquito at twenty thousand feet, flying straight and level, then Kitty said into his earphones, 'You son of a bitch." Her voice shook with fury.
'Kitty, my darling." He turned and smiled at her over the oxygen mask, his single eye glinting happily. 'We both got what we wanted, and had a lot of fun in the process. What are you so mad about?" She turned her face away and stared down at the magnificent lioncoloured mountains of the Kharna's Hochtland. He left her to sulk.
Some minutes later he heard an unusual stuttering sound in his headset, and he frowned and leaned forward to adjust the radio.
Then, from the corner of his eye he saw that Kitty was hunched up in the seat shaking uncontrollably and that the stuttering sound was coming from her.
He touched her shoulder and she turned her face to him, it was swollen and crimson with suppressed laughter and tears of mirth were squeezing out of the corners of her eyes with the pressure. She couldn't hold it any longer, and she let out a snort.
'You crafty bastard,' she sobbed. 'Oh, you tricky monster--' and then she became incoherent as laughter overwhelmed her.
A long time later she wiped away her tears. 'We are going to get on just fine together, you and me,' she declared. 'Our minds work the same way." 'Our bodies don't do too badly either,' he pointed out, and she unclipped her oxygen mask and leaned across to offer him her mouth again. Her tongue was sinuous and slippery as an eel.
Their time in the desert together passed too swiftly for Shasa, for since they had become lovers he found her a constant joy to be with.
Her quick and curious mind stimulated his own, and through her observant eyes he saw old familiar things afresh.
Together they watched and filmed the elephantine yellow caterpillar tractors ripping the elevated terraces that had once been the ocean bed. He explained to Kitty how in the time when the crust of the earth was soft and the molten magma still burst through to the surface, the diamonds, conceived at great depth and heat and pressure, were carried up with this sulphurous outpouring.
In the endless rains of those ancient times the great rivers scoured the earth, running down to the sea, washing the diamonds down with them, until they collected in the pockets and irregularities of the seabed closest to the river mouth. As the emerging continent shrugged and shifted, so the old seabed was lifted above the surface.
The rivers had long ago dried up or been diverted, and sediment covered the elevated terraces, concealing the diamond-bearing pockets. It had taken the genius of Twenty-man-Jones to work out the old river courses. Using aerial photography and an inherent sixth sense, he had pinpointed the ancient terraces.
Kitty and her team filmed the process by which the sand and rubble churned up by the dozer blades was screened and sieved, and finally dry-blown with great multi-bladed fans, until only the precious stones - one part in tens of millions - remained.
In the desert nights the mine hutments, lacking air-conditioning, were too hot for sleep. Shasa made a nest of blankets out amongst the dunes, and with the faint peppery smell of the desert in their nostrils, they made love under a blaze of stars.
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