Read Online Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms by Katherine Rundell - Free Book Online

“dammit.” And she sucked in her lips and bit them together.
    There was something so profoundly young about the gesture that Captain Browne was forced to close his eyes in a long blink of pain.
    â€œCome, Will. Let’s walk.”
    The path led them past the rockery, past the huge aloes, past the bold colors of the strelitzias, to the bed of flame lilies. Will squatted to sniff at their growing smell, but the captain stood rigid, staring sightlessly at the red flowers, which were curling brown at the edges. He felt unaccountably nervous.
    â€œWill . . . chooky, I’ve got some . . . ah, some news, my girl. . . .”
    â€œYes, Captain?” Will spoke very quietly. “Ja?” She heldher tongue between her teeth. It was the best way to keep the wrong words from getting out.
    Browne didn’t seem to hear. “The thing is, Will—Will, my girl, are you listening, hey?—Cynthia Vincy will be joining us here. Miss Vincy has said she will be my . . . wife.”
    Will choked on her tongue.
    â€œWell? What do you think of that, chook?”
    â€œOh,” said Will. “Oh.” She could barely hear herself. “Your wife .”
    To Will the word sounded with the clang of catastrophe. And it was ridiculous , she cried inside, because beneath the gloss of Cynthia Vincy’s nylon stockings (themselves ridiculous in the heat) the woman was shoddy, tawdry, empty. Will screwed up her eyes. She wondered how it was possible the captain had not seen it. He was slow, sometimes, and cantankerous and strict, but he was generous and honest. Wife! She wanted to roar, to spit at him. How could he not see?
    â€œWell, Will? What do you think?” said the captain. He smiled nervously.
    Will had opened her mouth for a bellow, for a furious, gaping but —but nothing came out.
    â€œYou’re not making a joke, Captain Browne?”
    â€œNo, Will.” And then, after a pause in which Will stood,pulling viciously at her long eyelashes, he added, “Nothing else to say, chooky?”
    â€œJa.” Will unstuck her lips. “I hope you’ll be always happy, sir,” she said.
    Without thinking, only to have something to do with her hands, she pulled up a flame lily by the roots and held it out to him. He thought she looked pitifully young, standing there, dripping earth from her flower.
    Awkwardly, achingly, Will tried to smile. “Always happy, Captain Browne, ’kay?”
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    Exactly a week later, Cynthia Vincy became Cynthia Browne. Her first act, before she had changed out of the smart white satin suit, was to inform the staff that the farm was to be sold. The newlyweds were moving to the efficiency of Harare, the capital city, to the streetlights and air-conditioning and asphalt roads of the town. Everyone had expected it.
    Everyone, that is, except Captain Browne. Ashen-faced, he tried to explain to his smiling wife that it would be double murder—death to the land, which needed him and his fifty years of knowledge, and death to him.
    Cynthia only purred with laughter, indulgent and caressing. She’d engineered her moment with precision. Insteadof the usual beer, she’d mixed the captain a gin and tonic—a rare treat for him—and, that done, she perched on the arm of his chair, one hand on his thigh.
    â€œAnd then the little girl, Charles . . .” She did not use her own name for Will, “that uncontrollable brat.”
    The captain’s old face smoothed itself, and he glowed a little, as if from an inner heat. “My Will? Ach , she’s a good girl, Cynthia. I knew the day I met you, ja , that you would love her like a mother. What about my Will?”
    â€œ Well, Charlie. Since you ask . . .” Cynthia gave a good impression of a woman cajoled out of her opinion. It was all in the eyebrows. “There are some things that women