A Spear of Summer Grass (10 page)

“Nearer to ten, but you are sweet. And handsome as ever! I do love the silver at your temples. Very distinguished! Rex, do you know my cousin, Dora?”

He was equally charming to her, but then Rex was a sort of purveyor of goodwill. Everyone felt better around him. Men sat a little straighter and fancied themselves heroes while women touched their hair and toyed with the idea of taking him to bed. He was not the most notorious playboy, but he’d been known to follow an interesting opportunity if it shimmied by in a tight silk dress. He just had a knack for making friends. He was the sort of man who could get himself elected head of the social committee in Hell.

“Would you like a drink, Rex? I’m afraid the wine cellar’s not actually stocked, but we at least have gin and champagne.”

“Tempting, my dear, but Helen is far too excited about seeing you. If I delay even a moment, I’ll never hear the end of it. Shall we?”

He shepherded us out to the car.

“Half an hour’s drive should see us there. We’re just up the valley from you,” he informed us as he slid behind the wheel. The interior was sinfully soft crimson leather, and I sank gratefully into it, happy that Africa could offer some comforts. Rex seemed to intuit my thoughts. He laughed.

“Yes, dear Delilah. Africa is not entirely uncivilized.”

“It’s a fascinating place,” I told him truthfully, “but you have to admit it is a bit rough around the edges.”

“I shouldn’t think that would bother you. Didn’t I hear you were brought up on a ranch in Wyoming or Montana or some such place?”

“Louisiana,” I corrected sharply. “And it wasn’t a cattle ranch. It was a sugar plantation an hour outside New Orleans. We had opera, for God’s sake.”

At that he threw his head back and laughed. “Of course, Fairlight isn’t exactly the best introduction to the comforts we have.” He sobered a little. “It’s a shame, really. Finest piece of property in the valley, and it’s being run right into the ground. Still, I think you’ll find plenty here to amuse you,” he added, opening the throttle. We raced down the road, sending up showers of red dust in our wake.

9

Helen screamed when we arrived, throwing her hands into the air and rushing out to meet us. I wasn’t even fully out of the car before she wrapped her arms around me and crushed me to her. It was a painful experience. Helen always was bony as a brook trout.

“Darling, you could have knocked me down with a feather when Mossy cabled to say you were coming—the veriest feather!” she said in her breathy, little-girl voice. I noticed her years of living with Rex had smoothed out her Midwestern accent to something that wasn’t quite on English street but at least knew the neighbourhood. “Come right in and have a drink and meet the others.”

She merely waved as I introduced her to Dodo, but Dora was accustomed to being an afterthought. Rex very correctly engaged her in polite conversation about the weather while Helen monopolized me.

She pushed a drink into my hands and towed me to the centre of the room. Clapping her hands for silence, she threw an arm around my shoulders.

“My darlings, this is why we have all gathered here tonight, to welcome dear Delilah. Her mother is one of my very oldest friends.” She placed heavy emphasis on the word
oldest
so everyone would understand that Helen was in no way ancient enough to be my mother. “She’s come to join our merry band, so you must all make her feel quite welcome.”

The guests raised their glasses and Helen sketched a little bow, somehow making my moment almost entirely about herself. It was a quintessentially Helen performance. She was a classic upstager, always seeking the spotlight even if she had to swipe it from someone else. But I hadn’t grown up Mossy’s child for nothing. I stood perfectly still, making certain I was positioned so the warm glow of the lamps would illuminate me, a figure in unrelieved white except for the crimson mouth and the sharp black ribbon to match my bob. I was creating an art study with myself as the subject, a
chiaroscuro
self-portrait that demanded nothing more than to be looked at. With her bright blue silk and unruly blond curls, Helen didn’t have a prayer. I moved my eyes slowly around the room, resting them for just a moment upon each face, caressing, inviting, but so coolly they might have imagined it.

Within seconds the men had all detached themselves and lined up for introductions. Helen looked a trifle put out, but she linked arms with me, probably in the spirit of “if you can’t beat them, join them.” She smiled warmly at the first comer.

“This is our resident medical man, Bunny Stevenson, a brilliant doctor and thoroughly lovely man. No, don’t blush, Bunny darling, it’s entirely true.”

He was about Rex’s age, but not wearing it quite so well. Whereas Rex’s laugh lines and silver hair were nicely balanced by a hard body and sinuous grace, the doctor was slightly inclined to
embonpoint
. A beard camouflaged what I suspected might be a softly doubled chin, but his handshake was warm and firm.

After him came a gentleman in a kilt accompanied by a woman in a dingy white gown pinned with a tartan sash. “Our local missionaries,” Helen said with a trifle less warmth than she had shown for the doctor. “Lawrence Halliwell and his good sister, Evelyn.” I shook hands with them both and forgot them almost immediately. I had little use for missionaries, particularly the ones who took on mission trips to godforsaken places and then dressed up for dinner parties. It whiffed of hypocrisy.

Following them was a lugubrious figure I recognised instantly. “Gervase, how nice to see you again. And Bianca, how brave you are to wear so much scarlet. I would never have the nerve.” Gervase Pemberton, the grim poet, and his tawdry Spanish wife. The comment on her cheap red silk dress was unkind, but she had behaved very badly at the last party I had invited them to in Paris. She had disappeared to the powder room and emerged wearing nothing but a string of pearls down to her nethers. I was no prude; I believed in having fun as much as the next girl, but giving away the farm to every Tom, Dick and Harry in the room was just common.

Kit Parrymore was next, and beside me Helen purred a little. “Kit, you naughty monkey. I think you’ve already welcomed Delilah quite thoroughly to Africa.”

He leaned near and brushed a kiss to my ear. “How word does travel,” I murmured.

“It’s the natives,” he whispered back. “They know everything and they tell it all.”

“I’ll remember that.” I gave him a demure look and he stepped back to let another fellow through. This one was sporting a face full of fresh bruises and some rather impressive cuts.

Anthony Wickenden held my hand a moment too long. “I must apologise for bleeding on your shoes in Nairobi. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is my wife, Jude.”

He drew forward a woman who might have been the loveliest creature I had ever seen if she’d given a damn. She would have done any showroom in Paris proud, and I could imagine her dressed in the latest fashion, leaning on the arm of a duke as she swept into the opera house. But instead she was here, in a colonial backwater, and the closer I looked, the more provincial she seemed. Her hair was badly cut and styled even worse. It had been crammed hastily into a snood and she was wearing an evening gown that looked as if it had come out of the closet of a plump octogenarian and altered badly. A moment later, I realised why.

Behind her was her aunt, presented as Sybil Balfour. “Call me Tusker,” she ordered, thrusting out her meaty hand. She was wearing a gown very similar in cut to Jude’s, only this one was straining at the seams. Jude’s had been awkwardly taken in and it hung badly on her tall, slender frame. Tusker was half a foot shorter and almost twice as wide, although her bulk seemed to be entirely muscle and when she shook my hand I would swear I heard the bones crack. “Welcome to Africa.”

“Thank you so much,” I said to her, and then to the company at large, “Thank you all for such a warm welcome.”

Helen beamed at us, then at Rex’s gentle cough, remembered to introduce Dora as well. We nibbled on tiny hot sausages and made small talk as Rex handed around fresh drinks.

“What’s this?” It was a champagne glass, but the liquid inside was foaming instead of bubbling. I peered at the murky colour.

“That is a Black Velvet, champagne with stout. Not a very pretty cocktail, I admit.”

“It looks like somebody tried to bottle evil.” But I had drunk worse. I took a sip and rolled it on my tongue. It was creamy and heavy and musky. “Not bad.”

He gave me a wink and moved on.

As soon as we’d finished our drinks, Helen whisked everyone into the dining room. “Now, I realise we’re odd numbers—only six men for seven women, so one of you gentlemen will have to take on two ladies,” she said with a waggish expression.

“Thirteen at table,” Bianca said darkly.

“Don’t be absurd, Bianca. That’s a peasant superstition,” Helen returned sharply. Meanwhile, Rex had solved the problem quite neatly by offering an arm each to Dora and to me and making it seem as if we were doing him a tremendous favour.

The table was set as beautifully as any in England—in fact, the entire house might have been spirited over by fairies, and I placed myself firmly in Helen’s good graces by telling her so.

“Oh, you are sweet!” she said breathily. “I designed it, you know. Well, I helped Rex. He’s so clever,” she added with a coo down the table in his direction. “We shopped for months in Paris and London to get just the right furnishings. Wait until you see my bathtub—pink quartz! So audacious it was even featured in
Tatler.
Of course, it took ages to have it all shipped over, but it is absolutely my dream house, right to the last detail.” She promised to give us a tour later, and then dinner was served.

The food was good and the wine impeccable, but something seemed slightly off with the company. There were undercurrents of tension I didn’t quite understand. In any close group of people there are bound to be secret resentments, and this group was closer than most. With the exception of Ryder and a few farming families, they represented the whole of white society in the little valley. There would be unspoken alliances in such a gathering, and doubtless unspoken annoyances as well.

But little things could fester in the African heat, and I wondered if any small thorn prick had been left to turn septic. I watched Bianca’s small dark eyes following Gervase with a feverish intensity. When she touched him, there was ownership in those caresses. I also saw Jude and her aunt Sybil work hard not to exchange a single word the entire evening. I was only a little surprised Jude was still living with her husband after he had beaten her. I had known my share of women mistreated by their men. But they were all tormented creatures, with eyes like caged animals and a tightly wound intensity that burned them inside. Jude was different, cool as a mountain lake, and I suspected she stayed with Wickenden because his beatings couldn’t really touch her. Perhaps that was
why
he beat her. Some men can only stand to be ignored for so long before they have to do something about it.

The soup was handed around by native servants wearing red fezzes and long white robes. They gave us little cups of consommé, and I dipped in my spoon, sighing in pleasure as I tasted it.

“The secret is eggshells,” Helen told me. “That’s how you clarify it. I’ll give you the recipe for your cook.”

Dora snickered into her soup, but I thanked Helen politely. Talk then turned to kitchen help and servants in general and how difficult it was to put together a competent staff.

“Of course, the language problem always gets in the way,” Helen said. “I can spend an entire morning trying to make them understand exactly what I want and end up with nothing more than a headache for my pains!”

“Why don’t you learn some of their language?” I asked.

The table went quiet for a moment, then erupted in laughter.

“You are optimistic, Miss Drummond,” the missionary Halliwell put in, not unkindly. “In any given household, there may be a Somali or Egyptian who speaks French or Arabic, a number of local tribesmen who speak their own languages, and some coastal folk who speak Swahili. Is a householder expected to learn all of these tongues just to be master of his own home? Far better for them to learn a little English, don’t you think?”

His argument wasn’t unreasonable, but it put my back up just the same. Before I could respond, Gervase looked up from the plate of duck that had been put in front of him.

“Typical clergyman,” he said lightly. “Would it suit you best if they were all speaking Latin and begging for the Host?”

Mr. Halliwell’s gentle expression did not falter. “Not at all. I accept that not all of them will be saved, but I live in hope, Gervase. As I live in hope that you, too, will come into the fold.”

Gervase rolled his eyes toward me. “Lawrence cannot bear having an atheist in the herd.”

“On the contrary,” Halliwell returned quietly. “I consider you to be a testimony to God’s faith that whatever questions you might raise, I am sufficient to answer.”

Bianca’s eyes flashed. “He does not require your answers.”

“Now really, Bianca,” Miss Halliwell said, putting her fork down. “There’s no call to be rude just because Lawrence is doing his job.”

“His job?” Bianca’s upper lip curled a bit. She wasn’t a particularly attractive woman, but she did scorn well.

“Yes, his job,” Miss Halliwell said firmly. “And furthermore—”

“Oh, will the lot of you shut up before you give me indigestion?” Sybil Balfour spoke up sharply. She reached down under the table and pulled out a tiffin box which she proceeded to fill with the contents of her dinner plate.

“Sybil, darling, you do a better job at hostessing my parties than I do!” Helen said, almost sincerely. She looked to me. “Sybil has a frightful cook. He prepares everything out of tins and even then he’s a menace. How many times has he poisoned you now, Sybil?”

“Seven,” the older woman put in promptly. She motioned to the doctor who reluctantly gave up half of his portion of duck for her tiffin box.

“If he’s so awful, why do you keep him?” I asked.

Sybil shrugged. “Obligation. I saved his life once. Nasty business with a snake. Anyway, he believes he’s indebted to me and won’t leave. He thinks he’s a fine cook, and I haven’t the heart to tell him otherwise. If it weren’t for the leftovers from Helen’s dinner parties, I’d never get a decent meal at Nyama.”

I passed her my dinner roll for her tiffin box and she gave me a gruff nod.

Dessert was a fig gratin, and with it came small glasses of Sauternes, the pale gold wine gleaming under the soft lights.

“Château d’Yquem,” Helen said. “I ordered it when I thought Ryder might be coming, but he begged off. Always out adventuring, we never know if he’ll turn up or not. He sends his regards to everyone.”

If anyone thought it strange that Ryder and Wickenden should be expected to meet socially so soon after the railway station thrashing, no one said a word. Wickenden went on quietly consuming his food, chewing quite slowly, perhaps because of the molar Ryder had knocked out. Only Sybil showed a reaction, a tiny smile she could not quite suppress. Jude looked as remote as ever, and I wondered if she was even grateful to Ryder for what he had done.

“Probably out with the Kukes again,” the doctor put in.

I looked up and Rex smiled at me. “Ryder is famous in these parts for his devotion to the native tribes. Although I think you’ve got it wrong there, Bunny. He’s a Masai man, through and through.”

The doctor shrugged. “As if one needed to know the difference.”

“I’m surprised anyone could confuse them,” I offered. “There are Kikuyu and Masai both at Fairlight and they don’t look at all alike, not really.” The Kikuyu were shorter, with rounder faces and limbs for the most part, while Gideon was tall and slender, his muscles long, his face fine-boned.

“Perhaps not,” the doctor conceded, “but they are all troublesome devils.”

I glanced about the table to find mixed reactions—boredom from the women, studied nonchalance from the men and a glimmer of warning from Dora not to start trouble. Kit alone was watching me with something like amused anticipation. It was the same expression I’d seen on my grandfather before he headed out to watch a cockfight.