Read The Angels Weep for Free Online Page B

he asked, with an abrupt
change of pace.
    ‘The American? He is very—’ Cathy hesitated.
‘I mean, he seems to be manly and rather nice.’
    ‘Attractive?’ Ralph demanded. ‘Irresistible
to a young woman?’
    ‘You know I don’t think like that,’ Cathy
protested primly.
    ‘The hell you don’t,’ Ralph chuckled, and as
he kissed her, he covered one of her round breasts with his
cupped hand. Through the thin cotton nightdress it felt taut as a
ripening melon. She struggled genteelly to free her lips from his
and to prise his fingers loose, but he held her fast and after a
few seconds she struggled no more, and instead she slipped her
arms around the back of his neck.
    ‘You smell of sweat and cigars and whisky.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘Don’t be, it’s lovely,’ she
purred.
    ‘Let me take off my shirt.’
    ‘No, I’ll do it for you.’
    Much later Ralph lay upon his back with Cathy snuggled down
against his bare chest.
    ‘How would you like to have your sisters come down from
Khami?’ he asked suddenly. ‘They enjoy camp life, but
even more, they like to escape from your mother.’
    ‘It was I who wanted to invite the twins,’ she
reminded him sleepily. ‘You were the one who said they were
too – unsettling.’
    ‘Actually, I said they were too rowdy and
boisterous,’ he corrected her, and she raised her head and
looked at him in the faint moonlight that filtered through the
canvas.
    ‘A change of heart—’ She thought about it
for a moment, aware that her husband always had good reason for
even his most unreasonable suggestions.
    ‘The American,’ she exclaimed, with such force
that behind the canvas screen Jonathan stirred and whimpered.
Instantly, Cathy dropped her voice to a fierce whisper.
‘Not even you would use my own sisters – you
wouldn’t, would you?’
    He pulled her head down onto his chest again. ‘They are
big girls now. How old are they?’
    ‘Eighteen.’ She wrinkled her nose as his damp,
curly chest hairs tickled it. ‘But, Ralph—’
    ‘Old maids, already.’
    ‘My own sisters – you wouldn’t use
them?’
    ‘They never get to meet decent young men at Khami. Your
mother frightens them all off.’
    ‘You are awful, Ralph Ballantyne.’
    ‘Would you like a demonstration of just how awful I can
be?’
    She considered that for a moment, and then, ‘Yes,
please,’ she giggled softly.
    ‘O ne day
I will be riding with you,’ Jonathan said.
‘Won’t I, Papa?’
    ‘One day, soon,’ Ralph agreed, and ruffled the
child’s dark curling head. ‘Now I want you to take
care of your mother while I am away, Jon-Jon.’
    Jonathan nodded, his face pale and set, the tears grimly
restrained.
    ‘Promise?’ Ralph squeezed the small warm body that
he held on his lap, and then he stooped from the saddle and stood
the child beside Cathy, and Jonathan took her hand protectively,
though he did not reach to her hip.
    ‘I promise, Papa,’ he said, and gulped, staring up
at his father on the tall horse.
    Ralph touched Cathy’s cheek lightly with his
fingertips.
    ‘I love you,’ she said softly.
    ‘My beautiful Katie.’ And it was true. The first
yellow rays of sunlight in her hair turned it into a bright halo
and she was serene as a madonna in the deep fastness of their
love.
    Ralph spurred away, and Harry Mellow swung his horse in beside
him. It was a fine red thoroughbred from Mr Rhodes’ private
stable, and he rode like a plainsman. At the edge of the forest
both men turned to look back. The woman and child still stood at
the gate of the stockade.
    ‘You are a lucky man,’ Harry said softly.
    ‘Without a good woman, there is no today, and without a
son there is no tomorrow,’ Ralph agreed.
    T he vultures
were still hunched in the tree-tops, although the bones of the
lions had been picked clean and scattered across the stony ground
of the ridge. They had to digest the contents of their bloated
bellies