Thunder over the Grass Read online

  “I am not a goddess. I am not the avatar of a goddess. I just want some help finding someone.”

  She waited while the girl translated and wondered whether she would know what an avatar was. The girl didn’t ask so Maliha let it go. The old woman patted her hand.

  “Mama Kosi will ask the ancestors to guide your future.”

  “Thank you.”

  She waited patiently while the old woman chanted and shook some bones. It was hot under the iron roof. The shack smelled of herbs and hot metal. The girl went to the side of the room and Maliha heard her pouring a liquid.

  The girl returned with a wooden cup which she passed to Maliha. “Drink.”

  Maliha gave it a sniff; there were herbs that had quite a sharp tang in her nose and something else underlying it. She decided it would probably be better to drink it down in one go so took a deep breath and let it go down without tasting it.

  “Good.”

  “What was in it?”

  “This and that.”

  The old woman had ceased chanting and grinned again. “Throw the bones.”

  A bone divination, thought Maliha. Something for the tourists. The small bones were worn smooth with age. She cupped them in both hands and rattled them around then cast them into the space between them.

  Mama Kosi leaned over them. She poked one with a stick as if she were trying to make it roll over but it seemed content enough in its current position. Mama Kosi grunted.

  She jabbered in a very animated fashion; her assistant listened carefully and waited until she was finished. “Mama Kosi says you are blessed by the ancestors. She says they will give you the strength to bear the weight of the world. She says you must honour your husband. She says you must find the lost.”

  “Thank you,” Maliha said directly to Mama Kosi. It was the usual meaningless nonsense. The fact that she was going to be married was obvious from the ring on her finger. If the old woman knew who she was she would know that bearing the weight of the world was something Maliha did every day. And finding lost things is what she was doing. It appeared to have great meaning, but it was sound that signified nothing.

  Maliha stood up. She opened her reticule and pulled out the kanga. “I’m trying to find who made this. Can you help?”

  Mama Kosi snatched it from her. She rubbed it against her face. Then threw it back at Maliha with a scream and spoke very fast. The girl looked concerned and ushered Maliha from the shack.

  “Mama Kosi felt the pain in the kanga,” she said by way of explanation.

  “But who made it?” asked Maliha again. “Do you know?”

  The girl hesitated then took the cloth. She opened it out. “From the pattern and colours I think it would be Lema Owusu.”

  “Where would I find them?”

  The girl shrugged. “In the south of the city.”

  Maliha gave up. She had a name and that would have to do for now. She was about to go but she remembered the woman who had been in the shack before her.

  “That woman who was here, what did she want?”

  “Her baby was stolen in the night.”

  Maliha did not know how to respond to that. She said goodbye and headed out to where Amita waited with the children.

  “Do you know where to go?” said Lilith brightly.

  Maliha looked at her watch. It was mid-afternoon, she was tired, hot and dusty.

  “Yes, I need to find Lema Owusu who probably made this kanga,” she said heavily. “But not today. I’m going back to the hotel.”

  Amita looked relieved. They walked back towards the centre of town and eventually managed to locate a horse-drawn hansom. Maliha paid Izak and Lilith for their assistance and told them to come back to the hotel at ten o’clock the following morning.

  It was around four o’clock when they got back. Maliha checked in on Barbara and the baby while Amita drew a bath for her. She held the baby for a little while. Little Baba looked at her with serious eyes and did not laugh until Maliha forced herself to smile. The baby responded with a great beaming grin that made Maliha laugh. And the baby giggled.

  “She is good for you,” observed Barbara. “You were always too serious.”

  Maliha sighed. “I know.”

  “You can’t carry the weight of the world alone.”

  Maliha looked up at her trying to see what Barbara was trying to say, but the older woman was just looking at the baby.

  Half an hour later Maliha sank herself into the bath while Amita bustled around the room and laid out clothes for the evening.

  Maliha absently rubbed the scar tissue on her leg. Izak had said something about children disappearing. But then they were street kids, so that could not be unusual. It would happen all the time.

  And then the woman whose child had been stolen away. That was not unheard of either. She might even have been lying, or deluding herself. She might have killed the child herself accidentally and then blocked the memory. Such things happened.

  Or perhaps someone in Johannesburg was abducting children.

  Could it be the slavers? That did not make much sense since children did not make good slaves. Except for abuse, of course. Then they were ideal because they could not fight back.

  Maliha cursed herself. It was easy to think of things like that when you had no direct experience, but she had known what Riette had been through and she now had Riette’s baby. Such thoughts had a terrible reality that brought genuine pain with them.

  But that was what made her the person she was. She could see things and imagine things that other people could not—or would not.

  She let her head sink beneath the water but the silence and calm did not aid her. There was no two ways about it. She must determine if these incidents were related, and whether they were part of a pattern.

  She rose from the water just as she had from the cleansing river when the priest had called her the avatar of Durga Maa.

  Chapter 2

  i

  Early the following morning the baby had woken Maliha and Amita. Although it was Amita who dealt with the necessary, and used the hotel telephone device to order some fresh milk. Once she was awake Maliha could not go back to sleep.

  She held the unhappy Baba for a few minutes while Amita dressed. Baba required constant bouncing and being talked at otherwise she cried. A baby has very simple needs, thought Maliha, but they are also very single-minded. If something is wrong they won’t stop telling you about it until it is dealt with.

  Maliha was grateful when Amita had finished dressing and took the baby from her. Maliha collected her dressing gown, put it on and tied the sash around her. She went to the French window, drew back the curtain and opened it. She stepped out on to the metal balcony. They were six flights up but the height did not concern her.

  She leaned on the rail and looked down into the street. It was not even six o’clock and the streets were already bustling. Mostly with black people carrying goods from one place to another. There had not been that number on the streets during the main part of the day.

  The balcony stretched along the length of the building with gates between the rooms, but they were not locked. Maliha looked in the direction of Valentine’s room. It did not take her more than a moment to make up her mind.

  * * *

  Valentine came awake to a light tapping that increased in volume to a solid thumping. He sat up and saw a shadow at the window to his bedroom. He slid open the drawer of the bedside table and took out his revolver. Automatically he checked it was loaded. He got out of bed and went carefully to the noisy person at the window.

  It was not that he thought he was being burglarised—most burglars did not advertise their presence—but he had learnt to be careful. With the gun at the ready he moved the curtain a fraction and saw the top of Maliha’s head. What could possibly have happened?

  He went through into his lounge and opened the door to the balcony. Maliha hurried through.

  “What’s wrong?” he said, putting his head out to se
e if there was anyone else with her. When he turned back she was undoing the belt of her dressing gown. It was a pretty thing which had an interesting sheen in the dim light. It showed off her curves.

  “Nothing is wrong.”

  She shrugged it off and let it fall to the floor. She stood before him, in the half-light, wearing nothing but a cotton nightgown that revealed her shoulders then hung loose to her ankles. Now that she no longer wore a belt her curves lacked any definition.

  He had seen her naked before. On the first occasion he had been busy killing the man that had touched her. On the second she had insisted he whip her until she bled. Neither could be considered a pleasant memory. But in the days that had followed that event, while her back mended, she had worn nothing above her waist much of the time. He had remained a gentleman at all times—save for a few surreptitious glances.

  “Perhaps you should put that down; we wouldn’t want it to go off.”

  “What?”

  “The gun.”

  He placed it on the table by the window. When he turned back the nightgown was going over her head. She struggled for a moment and he could see her body naked from the waist down. Then her chest was revealed but nothing more—though he was reasonably happy with just that view. She seemed to be having trouble.

  “Damn,” she said.

  “Can I help?”

  “I forgot about the bow at the back of the neck, Amita usually does that for me.” Her voice emerged from the folds of cloth that hung round her head. Valentine felt his body take control of him. He didn’t resist. He stepped up to her and placed his arms around her naked body.

  “For heaven’s sake, Valentine.”

  “Hush, you’ll wake Barbara.”

  He ran his hands down her sides feeling her cool skin. For some reason simply touching her released tensions in him.

  “I am stuck.”

  “I know.”

  “Oh, I see, now that I’m powerless you want to take advantage of me?”

  He slid his arms round her. He tried not to think about the scars as he slid his hands up her back. He pressed himself close.

  “I believe I will make you regret this,” she said and flailed her trapped arms ineffectually.

  He would have liked to bury his face in her neck but the nightgown was in the way. Instead he moved his hands up to the back of her neck and located the knot. He pulled back slightly and looked at her breasts. The gentleman in him considered that they were, in her present state, out of bounds. It really would be taking advantage. But he did kiss her skin where they began to rise from her ribcage.

  “Stop it,” she said quietly.

  “Is that what you really want?”

  She tutted. “I have come into your room and removed my clothing, Valentine. What do you think?”

  He kissed her a little lower and she pushed herself towards him. Then pulled back. “But I really would like to be able to join in.”

  He had not been concentrating on his attempts to undo the bow and had succeeded in pulling it into a knot. “I don’t think I can undo it from here,” he said.

  Maliha sighed. She wriggled again and the nightgown came down over her arms. He helped her put it back on properly. Her body was hidden again.

  “This wasn’t quite the way I planned it,” she said. She put her hands behind her neck and fiddled with the knot. “I can’t do it.”

  She turned round and presented her back to him. He admired the curve of her behind. She noticed the delay. “Could you try properly, please?”

  He tried. It was pulled tight. “I’ll get my penknife.” He headed off into the bedroom.

  “Then Amita will know,” she called after him.

  “Does that matter?”

  He jumped when her arms snaked around his middle—she must have followed—and held him as he rummaged in a bag. “Now who’s making things difficult?”

  Then she giggled. Valentine was astonished. He had heard her laugh before, yes, once or twice. She never giggled. It made her sound as if she were a young girl. But then she was barely twenty. She was a young girl.

  “Found it,” he said and turned on the spot so that she would not need to let go of him.

  She rested her head against his chest. He opened the pen-knife behind her back and sliced through the tie next to the impossible knot. He could feel her breasts pressed against him and he knew his lust was obvious. A strange idea took him and he cut through the seam in the neckline of the nightgown.

  He dropped the knife, gripped the cloth and ripped it apart. It tore at least as far as her thighs. She drew her arms up to his chest pushing herself away.

  “What have you done, you idiot!”

  “Shhhhh.”

  She sighed heavily and allowed the torn nightgown to fall. She did not cover herself as every other woman he had known had done.

  She put her head on one side and looked at him. “Do you want to hurt me again?”

  He went cold inside. “I didn’t want to hurt you the first time.”

  “That’s not an answer, though, is it?”

  She turned from him and walked slowly to the bed, inviting him to look at the whipping scars across her back. And her beautiful posterior.

  She drew back the sheet of the bed and climbed in. Her feet were under the sheet but it hid no other part of her. The light through the curtains highlighted her curves.

  “Do you want me to?” he asked.

  “Now you’re avoiding the question.”

  “So are you.”

  “What I want, Valentine, is for you to stop talking, remove your nightclothes and come into this bed with me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I am,” she said. “Quite sure.”

  “Why?”

  “Experience.”

  ii

  She lay back. She put her arms around his neck as he bent over her and kissed her on her lips. She pulled him down until he was pressed against her. His back was bent and it felt very awkward.

  “Just a moment,” he said as pushed back against her arms. “I can’t stay like that very long.”

  “Romance books have a lot to answer for,” she said and giggled again. On second hearing he realised it wasn’t so much the giggle of a girl, more one of a woman.

  He settled himself on his side, pressed up against her. They both ignored the way his manliness lay between them, demanding attention. She leaned up and kissed him on the nose and then placed her hand on his chest. She played with the hairs and ran her nail across his nipple. He shivered

  She smiled. “Is that pleasant?”

  He nodded. She seemed so relaxed and he felt as if he were a furnace about to explode. The times he had played the fantasy of this moment through his mind. The reality did not resemble his dreams—except for the way her body looked. In his imaginings they had writhed in passion as he penetrated her. They did not talk.

  “You haven’t read any texts on sexual activity, have you?” she asked.

  He did not trust himself to speak, so shook his head.

  She stared into his eyes and the hint of a smile ghosted across her lips. “You shouldn’t lie to me, Valentine.”

  “I have not read the sort of thing I imagine you’re talking about.” Then he added. “But you have?”

  She nodded. “Sir Richard Burton’s translations of the Song of Scheherazade, the works of Count De Sade, there was a French translation of the Kama Sutra, not to mention the mundane and utterly false texts by British doctors.”

  “I’ve seen some gentlemen’s magazines, and there was a moving picture of a man and woman.”

  “Moving pornography? That’s inventive.” She got up on her elbow. “What was it like?”

  He could feel the flush of embarrassment wash over him. He remembered how he had been transfixed at the sight. “Strange. I don’t really think it’s a sport for spectators.”

  She snorted. “Now you’re being disingenuous. There are lewd shows in every city. And, I have no doubt, even wor
se ones in exclusive men’s clubs.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Have you ever seen a show like that with real people?”

  For a second his mind flicked to what the guru had been doing with her, and what he had done to her with both Amita and Françoise present.

  “No.”

  His ardour was gone. She had talked it out of him. He felt terrible and guilty, as if he had lured her to his bed for his own nefarious purposes.

  She lay back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. He looked at her body. There was a crease of a scar an inch long directly beneath her right breast. He had not noticed it before; even when she had been undressed. He reached out and ran his finger along it.

  “When were you shot?”

  She grabbed his hand. “Don’t.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  He lay on his back next to her, their arms touching.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “What for?”

  “Spoiling it.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “I’m nervous,” she said.

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Well, I am. This is not something a woman chooses to do lightly.”

  She rolled over towards him and propped up her head on her hand. She was touching him along the length of his body, from her toes against his lower leg to where her right breast rested on his chest and her thick black hair fell around his head. She ran her other hand across his chest.

  He thought about how she had willingly given her body to the guru.

  “It was different with the guru,” she said as if she had been reading his mind. “That was an investigation. It was the only way I could get him to talk. He had to think I was in his power.”

  “You were.”

  “I knew you and the others were coming to my aid.”

  She didn’t use the word “rescue” he noted. “What about Françoise?”

  She sighed. “I don’t know, I was lonely—I wanted you, Valentine.”

  “Having relations with another woman is a curious way of showing your desire for me.”

  “You weren’t there.”

  “I’m here now.”