The Golden Sabre. Jon Cleary
help fit the tyre.
Cabell looked at Eden. ‘You know this area. Who could he be?’
‘I don’t really know it at all – we’ve hardly moved off the estate.’ She was feeling more helpless by the minute and that annoyed her; she had always prided herself on being resourceful. But she tried: ‘Nikolai, tell them you are up in the mountains with a prospecting team. There are one or two small iron mines up there, I think.’
‘I’ll go with you, Nikolai, and help you,’ said Frederick, and Nikolai looked at him gratefully.
‘You’ll stay where you are,’ said Eden.
Nikolai went off reluctantly, moving slowly down through the trees as if hoping the village would have disappeared by the time he reached it.
‘Okay, Freddie,’ said Cabell. ‘Hop out and give me a hand with this jack. You ladies get out, too.’
‘Mr Cabell,’ said Frederick, ‘if you wish me to do something for you, ask me, don’t order me. I am a prince—’
‘Freddie, you are a small stuffed shirt. Princes are a dime a dozen in Russia and don’t let anyone tell you different. Down in Armenia and Georgia there are more princes than sheep. Now get out and get to work on that jack or I’ll boot your aristocratic ass up through your aristocratic gut!’
Frederick stared at him, then looked at Eden for support. But she, while not agreeing with Cabell’s choice of language, agreed with him in principle. There might be more than enough lords and ladies back in England, but at least they did not call themselves princes. It was a subject she had never raised with her employer, but princes for her were proper royalty. She could never bring herself to see Frederick on the same level as the Prince of Wales. Six years in Russia hadn’t worn away even a thin layer of her Englishness.
‘You had better do what Mr Cabell says.’
‘Damned proletariat!’ said Frederick and skipped aside as Eden swung her handbag. ‘Wait till Father hears of this!’
‘Is there anything I can do, Mr Cabell?’ Eden said stiffly.
Cabell looked around. The sun had passed beyond the mountains above them and it was cool and pleasant here in the thick stand of firs. Some wild flowers, anemones and gagea, bright scattered trinkets, grew out of soft patches in the rocky earth. Nature’s music, a soft wind in the tree-tops and the whispering trickle of water over rocks, suggested a peace that he welcomed after the events of the day. It would be dark in another two hours and it might be an hour or more before Nikolai returned with the food and water.
‘You and Olga clear a spot for us to camp. We’ll stay here tonight and move on first thing in the morning. If you don’t mind soiling your hands, Princess–?’
‘One had better become accustomed to working,’ said Olga and picked up a twig between thumb and forefinger and threw it away with a fastidious grace that didn’t bode well for her future among the workers.
Cabell and Frederick, the latter in sullen silence, changed the tyres. Then Cabell went looking for a place to wash and found a narrow stream dropping down over steps of rocks through the forest. He was out of sight of the others and he stripped off completely and washed himself down with the clear cold water. He wiped the water from himself with the palms of his hands and stood for a moment breathing the cooling air, smelling the forest and watching the green dusk ever so slowly start to creep up between the trees. A blue-grey waxwing bounced from branch to branch looking for supper and a red squirrel slipped like shifting bark up and down the trunk of a tree. This, as much as making a living from the search for oil, was what brought him to these remote spots. He had not left Prairie Avenue just for money alone.
His father had been an adventurer whose courage ran out when he was only 500 miles from home. Jack Cabell had come down from Quebec heading for the Amazon and then the Andes; he had wanted to see jungles and really great mountains. He had got as far as Chicago and his nerve ran out. From then on he had travelled in books, safe in hardcovers against storm, disease, cannibals. He had kept the books for his son and Matthew Martin, always called that by his mother who had an Irish taste for long-windedness and no liking at all for long distances, had followed his father’s vicarious journeyings. But Matthew Martin had had more courage than Jack Cabell; and horizons called to him like houris. But, unlike most horizon-chasers, he always appreciated what he passed along the way. He smelled invisible flowers, heard silences, saw more than his eye told him. He knew that his job, if he was successful in locating oil, would bring men and equipment to spoil the very things he had enjoyed. But by then he had headed for another horizon and never looked back. That would only bring a sense of guilt and he was not perfect. The world, he hoped, would always be big enough to stay ahead of its despoilers. But sometimes he felt he was whistling into a wind that had not yet begun to blow, that was still beyond time’s horizon.
He pulled on his clothes, donning his shirt again, and went back to where Eden, Olga and Frederick had cleared a space around the car. The air was cooling by the minute and he knew it would be cold here tonight. The climate could do that here on the eastern slopes of the Urals; the difference between midday and midnight temperatures could sometimes be fifty degrees Fahrenheit. He looked at Eden, wondering how warm she would keep a man.
‘There’s a stream over there,’ he said. ‘You can all go and have a wash.’
‘Is that an order or a suggestion, Mr Cabell?’ Eden had taken off the jacket of her travelling suit; her once-white blouse was grey with dust and there were dark stains of perspiration under her armpits. She was tired and testy and still upset by the day’s events and she forgot about wooing Cabell to remain with them. Her voice once again was full of governess’ starch.
‘You can take it any way you want,’ said Cabell, a little surprised: he had thought they had declared an unspoken truce. ‘But while I’m stuck with a female nanny, two uppity kids and a limp-wristed Cossack, there’s sure as hell not going to be any other boss but me around here.’
‘You have a knack for putting people in their place,’ said Eden, still not retreating. ‘Are there any American Tsars?’
He grinned after her as she stalked off with the two children in tow. Goddam, he thought, how did General Bronevich keep his erection in the face of such scorn? She’d freeze the blood of a cantharides-crazy gorilla. How could he have wondered about her keeping a man warm?
Half an hour later Nikolai came back with two legs of mutton, two loaves of coarse bread, a small bag of potatoes, two full water-skins and three blackened and dented iron pots. And a load of high indignation.
‘Those villagers are capitalist robbers! They saw I was a stranger and everything doubled in price!’
‘You two kids peel the spuds,’ said Cabell; then raised his hand threateningly. ‘Get a move on! There’s going to be no loafers in this commune. Everybody works!’
‘Bloody Bolshevik tyrant,’ said Frederick and ducked just in time as Eden’s handbag came round in a swift whirl at his head.
The meal, when it was finally ready to be eaten, did no more than fill their bellies. ‘We eat much better than this at home,’ said Frederick.
‘Kid, stop complaining. You’re eating now what the workers in this country have been eating for centuries. Sometimes they didn’t get as much as this. If you don’t like it, just tie a knot in your digestive tract and live on air and your memories of what you had back home. But for crissakes shut up and don’t complain!’
The boy sat very still for a moment, then suddenly he sprang up and walked off into the trees. Then Nikolai said quietly, ‘Excuse me,’ and got up and went after Frederick. There was silence for a long moment and Cabell put down the plate of mutton stew. He had three tin plates in his own cooking gear and he had doled out the stew on them, keeping a plate for himself and letting the other four share the other two plates between them. He chewed on the last piece of meat in his mouth and it tasted like soft alum.
‘I’m sorry.’ He looked across at Olga, who sat