A Spear of Summer Grass (11 page)

“If they’re troublesome perhaps it’s because white people brought the trouble to them.”

Mr. Halliwell put down his fork. “An excellent point, Miss Drummond. Certainly the arrival of whites in the colony has changed the balance of power. But there were always conflicts, always warfare and bloodshed amongst these people. Why, even during our Great War, the Masai and the Bantu fought a vicious war that is still talked about. It is our duty to show them another way.”

“Bloody nonsense,” the doctor said, raising his glass to drink deeply. It was his fourth and the more he drank the more his hands shook. I made a mental note to stay healthy while I was in Africa. There was no way I wanted those plump trembling hands anywhere near me. “They’ve no understanding and no capacity for understanding. The kindest thing is to keep them in a place where they can be watched over by those who know best and left to sort out their own troubles.” He turned to me with a sly look. “I think you Americans had the right idea putting your natives onto reservations. It’s worked out well enough for you lot, hasn’t it?”

I ignored him and directed my attention to our host. “You’ve been here the longest, Rex. Do you agree that we have a moral duty to civilize the natives? Or do you think they ought to be pushed onto reservations?” I asked.

He paused and when he spoke, his answer was thoughtfully crafted. “I think the question of duty is one for men in comfortable London meeting rooms to debate. Out here there is only the truth.”

“And what is the truth?” I persisted.

“That Africa is a hard place, a very hard place. But it is full of promise, a land of such immense beauty and possibility that every man is a new Adam. Those who have lived here for centuries have lived simply, too simply. The land is not managed, and because of this, disease and animals take their toll upon the population and poverty runs rampant. We can fix that and we must if the whites are to thrive here. We are the builders of empire, my dear. We bring roads and schools, medicine and good food. We have the power to save the lives of children and, if we’re lucky, to put a few pounds in the bank against a rainy day. We can make a better life for everyone in Africa, and we need not choose to be either saints or devils to do it,” he added, looking from the doctor to the missionary. “We are but men, the sons of Seth, inheritors of this vast new Eden, this little paradise.”

It reeked of Shakespeare, but it was a good speech altogether. The doctor raised his glass high and shouted, “The sons of Seth!” slurring only slightly on the
s
’s.

Everyone else joined in the toast, and when it was drunk, Helen waggled a flirtatious finger at her husband. “And don’t you leave us out, Rex. It’s not just the men who will make over Africa. We women have a role to play, too.”

“Of course you do, my darling,” he said with a fond smile. “For without the inspiration of woman, what man has ever accomplished anything?”

She simpered at this piece of gallantry and in the wake of it, I turned to Rex again.

“Speaking of the role of women, I’d like to buy a milk cow.”

He raised his brows. “Fancy starting your own dairy herd? Do you know anything about cattle?”

I shrugged. “What’s to learn? They all have four legs and give milk and when they don’t you can shoot them and eat them for dinner.”

Bianca gave a little scream and covered her mouth with her hands, but Jude Wickenden laughed aloud, the first sound I had heard out of her all evening.

Rex smiled, his laugh lines creasing handsomely. “Dairy cattle take quite a bit more attention than beef cattle. I have an excellent book on starting a dairy herd if you’re interested, although I’d be more than happy to sell you as much milk as you could possibly need for your little household.”

“Oh, it isn’t for us. It’s for the Kikuyu labourers.”

The room went silent. Even the music from the gramophone seemed suddenly softer. Everyone’s eyes fixed on me, and I could have guessed what they were thinking. Only the doctor dared say it aloud.

“You’ll spoil those devils if you give them milk. They can get their own and if they can’t, well, it’s nature’s way, isn’t it? Culling the herd.”

Rex ignored him. “In that case you’d be better off with a few head of native cattle. They’ll be more resistant to disease and the locals will like the milk better. It has a more pungent taste than what our European dairy cattle give. Take my advice and get a boy to tend them as well, preferably a Masai. I can arrange it with one of the natives if you like.”

I don’t know what made me resist. It would have been simpler just to leave it in Rex’s hands. But before I could do the easy thing, my mouth interrupted. “Thank you, but I think I’ll try it on my own first.”

Anthony Wickenden snorted into his glass, and Sybil Balfour shot him an evil look.

“Glad to hear it,” she boomed at me from her end of the table. “Too many women come out here and forget they’ve got brains of their own.” She looked from Bianca to Helen, and the latter gave a bright peal of laughter.

“Guilty as charged, Sybil. I don’t do anything but set a nice table and make sure the guest room is made up for travellers.”

“I know precisely what you do,” Sybil shot back, and I saw that Rex was watching them both closely.

“I am practicing my hostessing for when I’m first lady of Kenya,” Helen said, wrinkling her nose at Sybil.

I looked at Rex. “Do you have aspirations to be governor?”

“Governor!” It was Anthony Wickenden, talking with a little difficulty through his swollen lips. They seemed to have stiffened up during the meal. “He means to be president.”

I looked curiously at her, but Rex merely waved a hand. “Helen, I think it’s time to cut Anthony off,” he said with a twinkle. He turned to me. “Our great hope is that London will extend to Kenya the same status it has conferred upon Rhodesia—that of a free nation.”

“I heard some talk about that as I was coming in. Isn’t that why Governor Kendall is in England right now?”

Rex nodded. “Yes, pleading our case before the Parliamentary committee. We are every bit as educated and devoted to Africa as the landowners in Rhodesia, and we fought just as hard in the Great War to support the mother country. We deserve our shot at self-determination.”

“It sounds like a reasonable enough request. Will they grant it?”

“They are politicians,” Gervase said bitterly. “When were politicians ever reasonable?”

Rex was more generous. “Now, Gervase, that isn’t entirely fair. They listened to the Rhodesians and they responded. We can only hope they do the same for us.”

“They might if it weren’t for the bloody Indians,” the doctor interjected.

Yet again I ignored him and turned to Rex as he explained. “What the doctor means is that during the Great War, India supported England, as you must know.” He hesitated, touching only lightly on my own involvement in that terrible time. “There are a great many Indians here, running shops, building railways. They are almost all merchants or labourers. But they want to own land, and under the current laws they cannot. India is pushing the government in London to grant them ownership rights and to keep Kenya as a crown colony. Naturally, we oppose this.”

I remembered what the ship’s captain had told me as we approached the teeming harbor at Mombasa. “But if they are business owners surely—”

I hadn’t even finished before the doctor cut me off. “One cannot expect an American to be sensible about these things!”

“Yes, we know nothing about colonies and revolution,” I said sweetly.

Rex threw back his head and roared with laughter. “Hoist with your own petard, Bunny.” He covered my hand lightly with his own. “I’m glad you’re taking an interest in what will become of us. I know you don’t mean to stay forever, but I do hope we will have the pleasure of your company for some time to come.”

He removed his hand then, but the warmth of it lingered on my skin and when I looked up, Helen was regarding me thoughtfully.

Kit rose then and lifted his glass. “To both of our enchanting new additions,” he said, graciously including Dora in his salute. The rest of the company joined in and Dora and I clinked glasses merrily across the table. I sipped deeply from the Sauternes, thinking that if Rex could run a country as well as he could stock a wine cellar, Kenya wouldn’t have a thing to worry about.

Rex rose. “And another toast, to Bianca and Gervase, who are leaving us tomorrow. Safe journey, my friends.”

Everyone drank, and I turned to the Pembertons. “Where are you bound? Safari?”

Bianca’s only reply was another curl of her lip, but Gervase was more forthcoming.

“We’re going down to the coast. Our place is farthest up the valley, and the altitude isn’t good for Bianca’s blood pressure. Once a year we take a rest and go down to sea level.”

“Ryder has a house in Lamu,” Helen put in. “It’s a divine old ruin, once the palace of an Arab slave trader! It’s terribly haunted by ghosts and djinns and that sort of thing, but it’s perched on the loveliest spot overlooking the ocean. It makes for a wonderful escape, and Ryder is a dear about loaning the place to any of his friends desperate to get down to sea level.”

“He must be a popular fellow,” I said mildly.

Helen gave a peal of laughter. “Oh, my dear, he’s legend! If you’d stayed in Nairobi any longer you’d have heard some of the stories.”

“Most of them far too scandalous for a respectable dinner table,” Miss Halliwell put in, her lips prim.

“Oh, he isn’t as bad as all that,” Helen said, flapping a hand at her. “He’s just high-spirited. For instance,” she said, turning her attention to me, “every year at Christmas everyone gathers at the club. It’s a wonderful time, so many people from all over the colony meeting up with old friends, the parties, the dances! Well, at one of the formal dinners, everyone was having a marvelous time when all of a sudden, the club steward comes in shrieking something about a lion out in the street.”

I lifted a brow. “A lion.
In
Nairobi?” I glanced around the table, but Rex was nodding.

“There was. A young male. Nasty piece of work, too.”

Helen picked up the tale, breathless and wide-eyed. “Well, everyone was so stunned, they just sat like statues, they simply couldn’t move! But not Ryder. He got up and walked straight to the nearest gun rack, took down a rifle and strode right into the street and shot that lion dead!”

Rex leaned near. “The story made it as far as the English papers because he was wearing full evening dress at the time.”

I gave him a little push. “Now I know you’re teasing.”

“Not at all,” he protested. “I’ll dig the clipping out after dinner.”

Good as his word, after we’d adjourned to the drawing room for a little dancing to the gramophone, Rex appeared at my elbow with an album, a sort of scrapbook of the colony. There were pages devoted to the races and the Christmas festivities in Nairobi with photographs of smiling people and newspaper clippings detailing the silly pranks they played on one another, some of them straight out of the schoolroom. But here and there were other clippings, sober reminders of lives lost too early, death notices and mentions of accidents and misfortunes.

“A hard place, your Africa,” I said softly.

Rex gave me a gentle smile. “But worth every life it takes, and so many more.”

“You really love it here, don’t you?”

The elegant silvering brows rose. “Of course. I know you don’t understand that yet. How could you? Africa is brutal, but you will come to love her, in spite of the brutality. Perhaps even because of it.”

He turned the page then and pulled out a loose clipping. He handed it to me with a smile. There were two photographs with the article. One featured the lion, stretched out on the bar of the Norfolk Hotel, dripping blood onto the polished wood. Everyone was packed around it in their evening finery, raising glasses in a toast to the narrow escape they’d had. Only Ryder was absent. The second photo was of him on his own. He was wearing his evening clothes, and was only half-turned towards the camera, as if someone had called his name and he had lifted his head in response.

“He wouldn’t let them photograph him with the lion,” Rex told me. “Thought it was all the most awful palaver. I don’t even think he kept the claws off that one.”

“The claws?”

“Oh, yes. Bit of a tradition of his. Every big cat he takes, lion or leopard, he takes a claw or tooth to put onto a bracelet he wears. Not as a trophy, mind you. He says it’s to remind him that every life out here counts for something and shouldn’t be forgot. Oh, dear. Bunny seems to have found the single malt. Do excuse me.”

He took the album with him but the clipping was still in my hand. I looked down at the photographs, the laughing, lively faces crowded around the atrocity of the dead lion. There was something faintly obscene about it, and I was absurdly glad that Ryder hadn’t been a part of it. Then I thought of the bracelet he wore, each tooth or claw representing a different animal he had killed, and I shivered a little.

“What’s the matter? Goose walk over your grave?” Kit’s voice was warm in my ear.

“You try wearing a backless evening gown,” I said, turning quickly. “You’d shiver, too.” I dropped the clipping to the table behind me and tucked my arm into his. “Come dance with me. I seem to remember your form is as good on the dance floor as it is in other places.”

He laughed and swung me into his arms.

10

The next morning Dora hunted me down when I was having a bath to talk about the house.

“It’s really in deplorable shape,” she said, arranging my toilet articles on a tray and primly averting her eyes as I soaped up. “Most of the books are riddled with worms, there are moths in the upholstery and white ants seem to be devouring the wallpaper.”

“Take it down. I hate wallpaper.”

“But it isn’t our house,” she pointed out. “It’s Sir Nigel’s.”

“Nigel has let it go to rack and ruin,” I reminded her. “The whole place needs a good turning out and to be scrubbed from top to bottom. Let’s make a list.”

She fetched pencil and paper and by the time we were finished with projects—wood to be polished, floors to be scrubbed, baths to be disinfected, beds to be turned out—it ran to three pages of Dora’s tidy little handwriting.

“Now make another,” I ordered her. This list was purely for me. I had her outline my plans to keep dairy cattle for the workers and plow under a few of the struggling old pyrethrum fields for growing vegetables. “And chickens,” I added. “There ought to be chickens for fresh eggs. That means building a henhouse and a secure pen. Do lions eat chickens?”

She blinked at me. “Good heavens, how would I know?”

I stood up and she turned away again, applying herself to the list. “But that means purchasing lumber and wire and nails...” She trailed off, writing busily.

“Not necessarily. We haven’t prowled through the outbuildings yet. The barn alone is probably stuffed with old junk. We might find what we need there.”

“We’d better,” she said grimly. “What you’re talking about will cost money—money we don’t have.”

I shrugged as I towelled myself dry. “I’ll think of something.”

“You usually do.”

After breakfast I was pleased to find the little Kikuyu mother with her child sitting outside in the shade of the veranda, waiting for me. I removed the child’s bandage gently and was satisfied to find the wound healing nicely with no sign of fresh infection. I redressed it and mimed that she was to continue doing as she had done. She nodded, smiling her beautiful calm smile.

Suddenly, the smile faltered, and I realised she was looking over my shoulder. Behind me stood a man I hadn’t met before, and as soon as I turned, he pulled off his hat.

“Miss Drummond! I cannot tell you how sorry I am I wasn’t here to welcome you properly to Fairlight. My wife and I had taken the little ones to the sea for a bit of bathing.”

He gestured towards a pale woman—unlikely in this climate—and a pair of unwholesome-looking children. The woman nodded and the children simply stood silent, the boy picking enthusiastically at his nose while the little girl stared at me and breathed through her mouth.

“You must be Mr. Gates,” I said. I didn’t bother to extend a hand. I had no desire to touch any of them and I was highly put out that he hadn’t been here to receive us.

“I am, I am. And this is Mrs. Gates,” he added unnecessarily. “And our boy, Reuben and our daughter, Jonquil.”

Jonquil! It was a surprisingly exotic name for such an ordinary child. No doubt they’d taken one look at the boy and pinned all their hopes on the second child. I thought of asking if the children were simple-minded, but it seemed unkind.

“I would like to discuss the state of the farm with you, Mr. Gates. Kindly make yourself available this afternoon.”

His skin had been burned to umber by the African sun, but under the tan his colour was sickly, and sweat rolled from his brow. The tic of a tiny muscle near his eye kept a regular beat. He was nervous.

“Of course, Miss Drummond. Although I did understand from Sir Nigel that you were here for rest and relaxation. We certainly don’t intend for you to wear yourself out with things you needn’t trouble over.”

And there it was. The sharp metallic scent of his fear was in the air. I could smell it in his sweat, and I smiled, making quite certain it didn’t reach my eyes.

“Mr. Gates, I do not find rest to be relaxing. I like to be busy and I think here at Fairlight there will be much to keep me occupied.”

The wife darted a glance at her husband and tightened her hands.

He gave me a fawning smile. “Of course, of course. I do understand. And naturally whatever I can do to help...”

He let the sentence trail off, but I pounced.

“Actually, you can. I want to know if there is scrap lumber on the premises. I want to build a henhouse. You can organise some labourers to put it together.”

“A henhouse?”

“For chickens,” I said slowly.

“Yes, I understand.” He was getting rattled. There was a slight edge to his voice now, a resentment he couldn’t contain anymore, and I saw the wife shift another quick glance at him. I had no doubt he took his bad moods out on her. She looked like the sort of woman who was accustomed to catching the rough side of a man’s tongue. Of course, I couldn’t blame him. Her cringing made me want to slap her myself. “You want to keep chickens?” he asked.

“Yes. And I want the barn cleaned out and a pasture staked for a few dairy cattle. When that’s sorted, I want to plow under the two fields closest to the road. The pyrethrum crop is nearly unsalvageable there. The land looks exhausted. We can buy loads of manure from the Masai and till it in and plant it with vegetables and maize to make our own
shamba.
Between the milk and the eggs and the fresh vegetables, we should get these people looking a far sight healthier.”

“You mean to feed the farmworkers?”

“I do. And I have a mind to take a closer look at the pyrethrum crop as well. This much land under planting ought to yield a far better amount than I saw reported in the farm books.”

He held up a hand. “Miss Drummond, I must insist that you let me handle this. Farm work is man’s business.”

I snorted. “Not where I come from. My great-grandmother is past ninety and still she manages a sugar plantation that runs to twenty thousand acres. She tends cattle, delivers babies, keeps the books and she cracks the whip on anybody who gets out of line, including her six sons. Now, I would like to know more about Fairlight and I think you are the man to tell me. So, why don’t you plan on meeting me this afternoon and we’ll sort some things out?”

I smiled again and walked off before he had a chance to reply. Around the corner, Ryder was waiting on the veranda. He was settled into one of the planter’s chairs, his booted legs resting comfortably on the long arms of the chair.

“Good morning. I see you’ve been getting acquainted with the help.”

I shook my head. “I dislike that man, and those children look like they ought to have been drowned at birth. But I don’t want to talk about the walking farce that is the Gates family. You’re late. The Kikuyu have been and gone.”

He rose and pointed toward the tins of powdered milk stacked on the veranda. With them were a large bottle of castor oil and another of vitamins, and a fresh tin of antiseptic powder.

I prowled through the pile, happy to find sacks of dried beans and rice as well as a wide basket of fresh produce, onions and gourds mostly.

“Well done,” I told him, brushing back my fringe. “What do I owe you?”

He stood the barest inch too close. “Consider it a housewarming present.”

“I think I’ll pay my own way. What do I owe you?”

He smiled then and eased back a step. “I’ll tally it up later.”

“If you’re sure. I’d hate for you to lose any more money on my account,” I said sweetly.

He would have been a good poker player. I had beaten him at his own game, and he didn’t like it much, but there wasn’t a damned thing he could do but swallow it whole.

Just then Gideon appeared, carrying another tin of powdered milk. “Good morning,
Bibi,
” he said in his lightly accented English.

I raised my brows and he gave me a broad smile. “You would say
‘Habari za asubuhi.’
”

He repeated it half a dozen times before I got the pronunciation right, but eventually I got my tongue around it. “Very good,
Bibi.
Now, I have heard that you would like to purchase a cow.
Bwana
Ryder and I will take you.”

“Gideon, I think Mr. Bell wouldn’t have bothered with the telephone if he’d had any experience with the marvels of the African bush. Yes, I would like to buy a cow, a very fine Masai cow.”

He shook his head. “This thing is not possible,
Bibi.
A Masai will not sell his cow.”

I thought of a peculiar Hindu gentleman I had met in London. We had spent the better part of an otherwise deadly dull dinner party chatting about India and his curious beliefs as I lapped up a steak and he pushed vegetables around his plate. The light came on.

“I understand. Cows are sacred to Masai.”

Gideon gave a hoot of laughter. “No. Cows are money,
Bibi.
They are worth far more than whatever you could think to exchange for them. But the Kikuyu keep cattle, too, and they do not respect the cattle as the Masai. They will take your money.”

“Lead on,” I told him.

He shouldered his spear and we walked together as Ryder fell in behind us. I remembered much of what he had told me the day before and I pointed out various plants to Gideon, trying out their Swahili names. A warthog ran across the path.
“Ngiri,”
I said triumphantly.

“Ngiri,”
Gideon affirmed.

I smiled at him, and when he smiled back I felt a curious tug. It wasn’t just a smile from a handsome man. I collected those like other women collected air to breathe. This was something altogether different. There was a gentleness in Gideon, a simple way of looking at the world. He was unencumbered by the silly and the trivial. There was nothing petty about him. His world was bound by death and blood, and life itself was short and sharp as a thorn, cheap as dirt and as precious as diamonds. It is a rare thing to find a man who wears his pride without vanity, but Gideon was such a man. I wanted suddenly to know everything about him, to drink up everything he knew to the last drop. Fate had given him the gift of serenity, and I envied him bitterly.

I looked sharply away and he went on, reciting the musical words of Swahili for me as one might teach a child. “This is how you say ‘fire’...”

* * *

Cattle-dealing in Africa is the same as the world over. We found a Kikuyu willing to sell a few cows and their calves, and after poking into their mouths and feeling their udders, Gideon negotiated a price. There was much discussion I didn’t understand and much staring on the part of the Kikuyu children. They were a little awed by a Masai warrior, but a white woman in trousers was really something.

When we were finished, Ryder and Gideon talked a moment before Gideon turned to me.

“You must have a boy to watch your cattle. I know such a boy. Would you come with us to where I live?”

I accepted, and we set out on what turned out to be a long and dusty walk.

Ryder seemed to have recovered a little of his good humour and as we trudged through the bush, Gideon spoke. “
Bwana,
this is a thing that I know...” It was a game they played when they were out walking, Gideon told me. It always began with one of them saying, “This is a thing that I know,” followed by some truth, a fact or bit of philosophy. Then the other took his turn, either arguing the point or contributing something of his own.

“Would you care to play,
Bibi?
” Gideon asked. “I will start. This is a thing that I know—that the droppings of two animals will disturb the cattle—the lion and the ostrich.”

“The lion I can well believe, but the ostrich? Really?”

“Oh, yes,” Gideon assured me. “The ostrich is no friend to the cattle. Now, you must tell us a thing that you know.”

“Very well. This is a thing that I know—that Ryder saved my life by shooting a buffalo on the drive to Fairlight.”

Ryder’s head came up sharply, and Gideon stopped. “
Bwana,
how big was this buffalo?”

Ryder didn’t look at him, but kept his eyes fixed on mine. I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard. “The spread of the horns was over four feet.”

“That is very, very big,
Bwana,
” Gideon pronounced. “It is an excellent thing that you saved
Bibi’s
life.”

Still Ryder didn’t look away. “We saved each other,” he said quietly. Then he turned sharply on his heel and stalked away.

Gideon and I followed, and Gideon called ahead. “
Bwana,
this is a thing that I know—that you carry many poems in your mind. Will you speak one for us?”

Ryder shook his head, never slackening his pace. “Not now.”

I leaned closer to Gideon. “He writes poetry?”

“Oh, no,
Bibi.
He remembers the poems that other men have written. He carries them in his head, and sometimes he speaks them.”

I couldn’t quite take it in. I stared ahead at the broad back, the rifle slung over his shoulder, the glint of gold in the rings in his ears. “No, really. Ryder recites poetry?”

Gideon nodded. “And the periodic table of elements. I have learned only as far as rubidium. I have much left to know.”

I was still trying to get my head around the idea of Ryder with a head full of poetry and Gideon learning the periodic table when we arrived at a small village so primitive it was like something out of the Stone Age. A wide-open area under some acacia trees had been cordoned off with great bundles of thorn.

“To keep the cattle safe from the lion,” Gideon informed me.

I nodded. “It makes sense. I ought to do the same around the pasture I’m clearing at Fairlight.”

“The barn will be all that is required, so long as you have a good boy to watch the cows,” he said. “A good boy who will not fall asleep and let the lion steal in and take what does not belong to him.”

He led us into the enclosure of the
boma
and to a mud hut. It looked black as pitch inside, and Gideon stood in the doorway, calling respectfully to the occupant. After a moment there was a dry, shuffling sound, like the rustling of autumn leaves, and an elderly man came to the doorway. He was wearing the Masai toga—which Gideon had told me was called a
kanja
—and several slender leather thongs looped about his neck. They were beaded, as were the heavy ornaments in his ears, and perched on the tip of his nose were a pair of thick, round spectacles, giving him the look of a curious owl. In spite of the warmth of the day, he was wrapped in a sort of cloak of long, greyish fur.