The Pulse of Danger. Jon Cleary
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haven’t I?’
He leaned towards her, savouring the warm smell of her, and kissed the hollow between her shoulder and throat. ‘It won’t be long now. I’m ready for home myself.’
She lay back as far as she could in the short bath and looked at him carefully. ‘Would you care to make me pregnant?’
‘Not under water.’
‘Not here, silly.’ She laughed, and raised a dripping hand to stroke his cheek. He shaved only once a week, on their rest day, and he now had four days’ growth of stubble; but she didn’t mind that, she knew that beards protected the men’s faces from sunburn in the high thin air. She had never been a woman who wanted her man sculptured out of soap and shaving cream. The weatherbeaten skin, the calloused hands, the bone and muscle, all made up part of what she loved in this man. She, too, had never asked for perfection in him. ‘No, when we get back home. Because you know, don’t you, that I’m not coming on any more trips with you?’
He hesitated before he nodded. ‘Will that keep us together – a child?’
‘It will help.’
He stared at her for a while, then he lay back on his bed. They lay side by side, she in the bath, he on his bed. ‘It’s so bloody cold-blooded. Let’s have a baby, just like that. It’s like deciding to take out an insurance policy.’
‘It wouldn’t be cold-blooded once we got down to it.’
‘Don’t be sexy, love. I’m not in the mood for it.’
‘All right, I’ll be sensible, then. It’s not being cold-blooded, darling. People plan to have children, just as they plan not to have them. We decided not to have any—’
‘You mean I decided.’
‘All right. But I agreed. Now I’m the one who’s doing the deciding—’
‘Decide, decide! God Almighty, what’s decision got to do with love-making?’
‘That’s a man’s outlook, darling. When a woman makes love, there’s always some decision about it.’
‘Even with her husband?’
‘Not always, but sometimes. Like now. Hand me my towel.’
‘You still look as good as you ever did. Will you look as good as that after you’ve had a baby?’
‘Better.’
‘I’m a lucky bastard.’
‘So am I, darling. Don’t ever let our luck run out.’
She bent and kissed him. He held her to him, his rough hands scratching like bark on the silk of her body. Outside the radio was switched on: Wilkins, the other pessimist, searched for Delhi on the dial. Then the voice came over the mountains, lugubrious and hopeless: ‘The Chinese continue to advance …’
Marquis came awake with a start, the shot ringing in his ears like an echo from a dream. Then he heard the shout, and he knew he hadn’t been dreaming. Eve sat up in her bed, her voice cracking with sleep and shock. ‘What’s that?’
Marquis tumbled out of bed, pulled on trousers and sweater over his pyjamas, slid his feet into the old desert boots he wore around camp; then just before he stepped out of the tent he dragged on his anorak and zipped it up to the neck. He was glad that he did: as soon as he came out into the dark morning the cold attacked him. The wind had swung right round to the north, was blowing out of Tibet with all the chill of approaching winter. Marquis shivered, chilled by omen as much as by the wind.
His eyes watered as the wind cut at them, but he saw the dim figure running away from the kitchen tent. It ran towards the stores’ tent; Marquis shut his eyes to blink away the tears; when he opened them, the figure had gone. He wiped his eyes and looked back at the kitchen tent.
Singh had come out of the kitchen tent, a pistol in his hand.
As Marquis crossed to him, Tom Breck and Wilkins came out of their tents. ‘What’s going on? What the hell—?’
Singh said, ‘Someone tried to kill my prisoner.’
Marquis flung back the flap of the kitchen tent. Two rough beds had been made for Singh and Li Bu-fang on the floor of the kitchen; Li lay flat on his back on one of them, his hands still bound. Pots and pans lay about him like discarded helmets; whoever had tried to kill him had been clumsy. A sack of flour had burst: Li was white as far up as his waist, like a man half-way to being embalmed.
‘You all right?’ Marquis said, and the Chinese nodded. He was no inscrutable Oriental now: he was as frightened as the most emotional Occidental. Marquis turned back to Singh. ‘Who was it?’
‘I didn’t see. I heard Li cry out, I saw this shape, I fired at him, but he got away—’
The whole camp was astir now. Eve and Nancy stood in the doorways of their respective tents, each wrapped in an anorak and a blanket. The porters had come out of their tents, but had not moved up towards Marquis and the others; they stood in a broken line, watching carefully like spectators at a political rally they resented. Marquis could not see their faces, they were just black shapes against the lamps in their tents; but he recognised the stiffness of their attitude, he had seen it in Africa and other parts of Asia when trouble occurred. He, Eve, the Brecks, Wilkins were now one with Singh and Li Bu-fang: they were all foreigners.
‘We’d better ask some questions, then,’ said Wilkins. ‘It must have been one of the porters.’
‘Get them up here at once,’ Singh said.
Marquis turned his head slowly. ‘Colonel, this isn’t Poona, or wherever your barracks are. This is my camp – mine, not yours. Don’t start chucking orders around here, or you’re likely to be cut down to lance-corporal. Don’t forget, no one invited you in here.’
The two men stared at each other in the dim glow from the lamp in the kitchen tent. Singh still held his pistol; the barrel of it came up. Marquis tensed, waiting for the bullet; he found it incredible that the Indian should shoot him, but he knew it was going to happen. Singh’s face was distorted with an anger that made him ugly. I was right, Marquis thought, he does belong to another century. And waited for the bullet.
Then down by their tents the porters turned all at once, as if turning away to avoid seeing the murder. Or perhaps they were going to break and run. That thought seemed to strike Singh; the pistol swung away from Marquis in the direction of the porters. And without quite knowing why, Marquis stepped in front of the pistol again, keeping it aimed at himself, but at his back this time as he turned towards the porters. He shouted, ‘Nimchu!’, but the wind snatched away his voice and the shout sounded more like a bleat. Then Nimchu came towards him, another porter with him. It was Chungma, breathing heavily, trembling with exhaustion.
‘What the hell brought you back, Chungma?’
‘Chinese, sahib.’ The boy had only a few words of English; he hissed them into the wind. ‘Down valley.’
‘There are forty or fifty of them, sahib.’ Nimchu had been speaking to Chungma as he had brought the young porter up to Marquis. ‘Camped where this river joins the river from the east. Chungma was camped there himself when they arrived. He was very lucky to escape.’
‘Did they see you, Chungma?’
‘Not know, sahib.’ His teeth glimmered in the lightening darkness; he was still young and innocent enough to joke about disaster. ‘Ran too fast.’
Marquis also grinned, although he was in no mood for joking. He glanced over his shoulder at Singh; the latter had put away his pistol. Then he looked back at Chungma. ‘Which way were they heading?’
Nimchu spoke to Chungma, then turned back to