A Spear of Summer Grass (27 page)

If she’d written to tell me off it would have been easier. But I suddenly couldn’t bear the thought that she might understand, might be on my side. I put the letter away to read when I was alone and looked up at Quentin. He sighed.

“Jesus, Delilah,” he said, subsiding heavily into a chair. “How did it come to this?”

“How does it ever? Wrong place, wrong man.”

“You have a knack for that,” he acknowledged. He leaned forward, and I could smell the familiar scent of his body, his cologne, the hair oil he used. “I have to ask. Did you do it?”

“I thought lawyers never wanted to know the truth.”

“I am a solicitor.”

I shrugged. “I never knew the difference.”

“The difference is that I intend to make sure you get out. Now, tell me the truth.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and looked him squarely in the eye. “No. I did not shoot Kit Parrymore. Happy?”

“Not entirely. You could be lying.”

“To you, darling? Never.” I bared my teeth in a smile.

“Delilah, you do understand this is serious? Murder is a hanging offense.”

I gave him the same response I’d given Dora. “Only if you’re convicted.”

“Dammit, Delilah!” He thrust both hands into his hair, disrupting his careful combing.

“I’m sorry, Quentin. Yes, I understand this is serious, but I didn’t do anything except lie to the police, and they deserved it.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere. What did you lie about and why?”

“I may have indicated that I killed Kit.”

He blanched. “You confessed? To murder?”

“Well, yes. It put them in a rather difficult situation, you see, because I wouldn’t make any further statements without my attorney. Now, they could have found one for me here in Nairobi, but all I had to do was wave my American passport and invoke the name of my senator uncle and they were happy to wait for you to arrive to question me further.”

“You mean you haven’t been charged?”

“No.”

“Good God. And they’ve kept you in prison the entire time?”

“I think they said I was ‘helping police with their inquiries.’ Makes me sound quite eager, doesn’t it?” He rubbed his face, and there were shadows under his eyes and around his mouth. “Poor Quentin. How long is it since you slept?”

“Days. I can’t remember. I think I may have dozed on that god-awful train from Mombasa, but some fellow kept telling the most frightful stories of lions eating the railway workers.”

“The lions of Tsavo. You ought to have listened. It’s a fascinating tale.” I thought back to the day I had tortured Dora with it. It seemed a lifetime ago.

“Be that as it may, I would rather keep to the matter at hand. The police inspector will be wanting a formal statement from you, and I would advise you to answer as fully as you can without revealing anything that might be prejudicial to your case.”

“I don’t even know what that means. Why don’t I just tell the truth and we’ll see where we are when we’re finished?”

“It might be at the end of a hangman’s noose,” he replied brutally. “If you don’t know if you ought to answer something or not, look at me. I will guide you.”

“Fine.”

“Are you ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

* * *

It lasted seven hours with short breaks for lunch and tea. By the time we were done, the inspector lectured me thoroughly on the venality of making false statements and Quentin lectured him thoroughly about due process. It was a very thorough experience for everyone, and when it was finished, I was free to go. Inspector Gilchrist had arranged for me to leave from the back of the prison and he personally escorted us to the door. He opened it and I saw that the rains were still coming down in a soft grey curtain. Gilchrist turned to Quentin.

“Mr. Harkness, perhaps you will be good enough to make certain the car has arrived. I wouldn’t like Miss Drummond to stand around outside and attract the attention of the press. No need to give the reporters anything else to write about,” Gilchrist said, his lips twitching like a rabbit’s. Quentin hurried out the back door leaving us alone for just a moment.

“Thank you,” I said, tipping my head and smiling sweetly.

“Don’t bother,” he growled. “I ought to charge you with making false statements and hindering my investigation. You’ve cost me nearly three weeks.”

“No, I didn’t. I’ve had time to work it out, Inspector. You knew the first day you had me here that I didn’t do it. And you knew Gideon didn’t do it either. You wanted me in custody because as long as I was being held somewhere, you could claim to be doing your best to bring Kit’s murderer to justice and you could keep Government House happy. And all the while, you gave an innocent man a chance to get to freedom.”

His jaw hardened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do.” The inspector wasn’t tall. I didn’t have to stand on tiptoe to kiss him. I pressed my lips to his and moved back just as he lifted his arms. “Thank you.”

He reached into his pocket. “I believe this belongs to you.”

He held out a Masai bracelet, blue and white, with a thin line of distinct green beads. I would still look in my jewel box when I went back to Fairlight, but it would be a formality. This was the one Moses had given me, the bracelet that had led Gilchrist to Gideon in the first place. The slight kink where I had stepped on it getting out of Ryder’s truck was unmistakable.

I hesitated. “What makes you think that is mine?”

“Routine investigation. It does uncover most things eventually. You know, we’d have saved a great deal of time and trouble if you had just admitted that you lost it at Parrymore’s during one of your trysts.” But the inspector was wrong. I hadn’t seen it since the night I had been with Ryder, the night I had tucked it into my jewel box for safekeeping. Gilchrist wasn’t the only one to get it wrong, I realised as I took it from him. Gideon must have thought I had dropped it, too. He would have known it wasn’t his, but he would not put me in danger by telling anyone it was mine. He had protected me with his silence.

I slipped it into my pocket and assumed a nonchalant smile.

“I wasn’t sure you had mine. For all I knew it might have been safely back at Fairlight sitting in my jewel box. Besides, I thought it might be more fun to spring it on you in court if you ever managed to get your hands on Gideon.”

His expression was earnest. “He can’t come back, you know. I’ve spent the past weeks persuading Government House that he’s out of reach. If they so much as catch a rumour that he’s back, they’ll force me to take him in. I won’t have a choice, and he will hang.”

“I understand. Tell me one thing. How did you know he was innocent?”

“Because I know who did it. And that’s all you will get from me.”

He was as good as his word. He refused to tell me anything else, and when he handed me over to Quentin, he seemed happy to be rid of me. But I looked back once and I saw him standing alone, his eyes closed, his face pale, his hands clenched at his sides.

“That man looks anguished,” Quentin said, smiling slightly. “You must have been hard on him.”

“You have no idea.”

23

Quentin and I retired to the Norfolk where he had checked us in under assumed names. Bathing arrangements had been almost nonexistent at the prison. It was heaven to scrub myself completely clean and I spent two hours in the bathtub, filling it over and over again until my skin was wrinkled as a raisin’s and I smelled like lilies. Quentin was waiting in my room when I emerged.

“Feeling better?”

“Immensely. Is that dinner?”

“It is. I’ve ordered your favourites and three bottles of champagne.”

“That’s a start,” I told him.

It was hours before we finished and when we did the table was littered with soiled dishes and ashes and the dregs of our champagne. We put out our cigarettes in the butter and danced in our bare feet until the manager came to complain. I poured him a glass of champagne and sent him off with a smile. Cables arrived and flowers, too, enormous bunches of them that filled the room with a thick perfume.

“It appears my incognita has been violated. And it smells like a funeral home in here,” I told Quentin, peering at him through the bottom of a champagne bottle.

“Better than a wedding chapel,” he retorted.

I laughed aloud. “Poor Quentin. Marriage hasn’t treated you very kindly.”

“Cornelia’s pregnant. Again.”

I waved my cigarette. “I should have a talk with that girl. Introduce her to the diaphragm.”

“I wish you would,” he said.

“Oh, God, Quentin. Don’t be morose. You’ve money enough to take care of your brood, and I rather doubt you are even that bothered with them.”

“I don’t mind about me. I mind because of what it does to Cornelia. She changed when we had the twins. No conversation but nappies, no interests but gripe water and teething biscuits. It’s only going to get worse with another baby. I married a lovely girl and ended up with my own grandmother.” He nodded to me. “That’s not the smallest of your attractions, you know. You talk about things. You go places. And you’re always lovely and slim and firm.”

“Careful, old boy. You’re leering now.”

“Your robe has come open,” he informed me.

“So it has.” I didn’t bother to adjust it. Quentin had seen it all before. He leaned close.

“What about it, my beauty? A bit of something warm to remember you by before I go back to cold Cornelia?”

I removed his hands from my body and placed them gently in his own lap. “This is all the something warm you’ll be getting tonight. I’m very grateful to you, Quentin. But if you want payment for services rendered, you’ll have to send me a bill.”

His expression was one of frank astonishment. Then he laughed, a great hearty belly laugh that ended with him wiping his eyes on his sleeve. “My God. It’s finally happened. You’ve fallen in love, haven’t you?”

“No. I wouldn’t know how. But I do know that my life is quite complicated enough just now without throwing yet another man into the mix.”

He blinked. “Just how many men are we talking about?”

“Does it really matter? You know I’ve always been good at juggling.”

“I don’t know,” he said coolly. “Sounds to me as if you’re losing your touch.”

He rose and I handed him his shoes. “Don’t be sore, Quentin. I have to figure some things out and I can only do that with a clear head. If I sleep with you now, I’ll only confuse myself more. You always were so good at making me forget everyone else.”

That little piece of flattery did the trick. He gave me a contrite look and dropped a kiss to my cheek. “Darling Delilah. I was being a brute. Forgive me. I hope you manage to get it all sorted.”

“So do I. Will you come to Fairlight?”

“Can’t, I’m afraid. I have to hurry back to England. I left things rather in a muddle when I dashed off to take care of you.”

I put my hand to his cheek. “Dearest Quentin. How good you are to me.”

“But not quite good enough,” he said ruefully. He kissed me again and then he was gone.

That night, alone in my bed, I finally opened Mossy’s letter. I read it over quickly, then twice more, savouring each word. She had a child’s handwriting, loose and loopy, filling the pages with a hasty scribble of violet ink. She wrote that Granny Miette was holding a conjuring and had assured her I would be protected. Mossy related this in stilted words, and I could just picture the tight expression on her face. She claimed not to approve of such goings-on, saying they were backward and silly, but I had known her to ask for a bottle of Follow Me Water when she wanted to turn a man’s head or a pinch of goofer dust to sprinkle in the footsteps of a rival. She went on to say that Granny had made a special trip into New Orleans to light a candle to Our Lady of Prompt Succour. I smiled when I read that and crossed myself quickly. “God bless you, Granny,” I murmured. The Colonel hadn’t taken matters quite so well. He’d cut me off for good, Mossy said. No more tidy allowances coming from the profits of the sugar plantation, and if I ever wanted to come back to Reveille to see Granny, I’d have to do it when he was elsewhere. I muttered a swearword or two as I turned the page. The rest of the letter was just random news of people we knew—who got married, who was getting divorced and who was the cause of it. It was Mossy’s way of telling me that life went on and that this, too, would pass. She carried on in that vein until the last page.

They said there was a curse on us and maybe there is. Maybe we were born under bad stars or maybe for us there’s always a bad moon on the rise. But if it’s true, if sorrow and loss follow us around like mean stray dogs, then that means somewhere, some fighting angel decided we were strong enough to take it. So shine up your dancing shoes and pinch your cheeks and lift your chin, child. Because if we’re on the road to hell, we’re going to dance the whole damn way and give them something to talk about when we’re gone.

And below that, she had signed it, using a word that at her insistence hadn’t crossed my lips since I was five years old.

All my love, Mama

I folded the letter and put it under my pillow and turned out the light. And in the darkness I heard it, the quiet green stillness that comes when the rains end and all the world is limp and soft and ready to begin again. I turned my face to the window where a slender new moon was rising and I slept.

* * *

I had nothing to pack, so I was empty-handed when I strolled down the main staircase of the Norfolk. My bill had been settled by Quentin, and I walked out to find Ryder’s ancient battered truck idling at the curb. I ran to it and wrenched open the door.

“
Memsahib
Delilah! How good it is to see you! I have come to take you home.” Mr. Patel was wearing his motoring goggles, as was his little monkey. The monkey hopped up onto a hamper and chattered angrily at me.

“Do not mind him, he does not like the city,” Mr. Patel advised. “Come, come! Get in before the reporters realise I have come to take you away.” He beckoned and I slid into the seat.

“How kind of you to come and get me,” I murmured.

He ground the gears to powder and the truck lurched away. “Think nothing of it. The
sahib
sent word and told me to do this.”

“You’ve heard from Ryder?”

Mr. Patel said nothing for several minutes as he negotiated his way out of the heavy traffic, weaving through ox carts and rickshaws and long, smooth touring cars. Finally, we turned onto the damp
murram
road out of Nairobi and he spoke.

“What was it that you asked me? Oh, yes, yes,
Memsahib
Delilah. I have heard from him. He cables me to come to get you, and I am happy to do this thing.”

“He cabled you?” There were few
dukas
farther out than Patel’s and none were in the direction he was supposed to have taken Gideon. “From where?”

“Egypt.”

“Egypt! What the devil is he doing there?”

“This I do not know. He says he has business and he will come when it is finished.”

I hesitated. “Was there anything else?” I didn’t dare ask about Gideon directly. I didn’t know how much Ryder had told Patel and the fewer people who knew Ryder had taken him, the better.

Mr. Patel’s brow furrowed. “No,
memsa.
All he spoke of was the package you had entrusted to him.”

“What did he say about the package?”

“That it arrived safely and you were not to worry. He would tell you more about the package when he returns. This is all that I know.”

The monkey began chattering again and it was impossible to talk. I slumped back against the seat, letting the weight of the last weeks roll away with each mile that unfurled over the thin red ribbon of road.

* * *

The drive was long and sticky and I was drooping with fatigue when we arrived. But the smell of the earth after the short rains was intoxicating. Bushes were thick with green leaves and gladioli and wild orchids burst from ripe buds. Everything seemed heightened, the colours brighter, the sounds sharper. The scent of Africa hung in my nose and mouth, the tang of the freshly saturated earth, the green smell of new grass, woodsmoke and dung and that peculiar smell of Africa itself, unlike any other. It was evening when we arrived at Fairlight, and to my surprise, Mr. Patel stopped just inside the gate. He turned off the engine, and in the silence I heard it, a steady pounding, like a great beating heart within the land.

“What is that?”

He gestured for me to get out and I did. We walked the last quarter mile, and as we came around the curve where the jacarandas stood in full bloom, I saw them. From every tribe who crossed Fairlight—from the Masai, from the Samburu and the Kikuyu, from other, smaller tribes. They stood, shoulder to shoulder, some of them enemies from the womb, and yet there they were, stamping their rhythms into the soil of their common mother. They were dressed for celebration, wearing their finest skins or
kanjas,
decked in beads and bracelets, copper wires and necklaces. They lifted up their voices together, a mixture of tribal tongues and Swahili and English, a new Babel, but with one meaning. In every gesture, in every face, I saw the same emotion, and I felt the weight of it so hard upon my shoulders, I almost fell to the ground.

I moved forward and the people gathered about me, closing around like a fist, fingers cradling something precious within the palm. They chanted and sang and stamped, and at length one figure broke forward. It was Gideon’s
babu,
guided by a
moran.
He put his hand to my head and blessed me, and when he spoke in his high, reedy voice, it was loud enough to carry over the stamping of a thousand feet.

“Nina mjukuu.”
It was Swahili, and his words were halting but I understood them.
I have a granddaughter.
He carried on, speaking and blessing, but I heard none of it after that first pronouncement. The chanting and stamping was a buzzing in my ears, as if a thousand bees had come home to nest. When he stopped, I took his hands in mine and acknowledged his blessing.

“Nina babu,”
I replied to him.
I have a grandfather.
The people gave a great shout, and I saw that some of the women wept. They came forward then, these aunts and sisters of Gideon, and they enfolded me, smearing my clothes with the red ochre and the grease that they used to make themselves beautiful. They touched my face and hands and embraced me and called me sister. The men stood back, chanting a song of one who would not be forgotten, of loved ones lost and returned to the earth, and of the land itself which does not die but is always born anew with each fall of the long rains. They chanted of life, which is short as a spear of summer grass or long as the heart of the Rift itself, and of the silent land that waits beyond. They chanted of Africa.

They were still chanting when I began to crumple, long after night had fallen and long after the fires had been lit, and when they carried me to my bed and tucked me in as tenderly as a child and left me, it was this song of Africa that was my lullaby.

* * *

When I went to the window the next morning I saw that there was no sign of them save the bright green grass that had been trodden under their feet. After I had eaten a simple breakfast, the Africans came again, but this time it was the farmworkers, neglected after my stay in Nairobi. They came as if I had never left, bringing their wounds and ailments, offering up their pain. I applied ointments and powders, bandaged and gossiped, taking from them their suffering and their stories and giving them relief in return. They told me of two babies born while I was gone and an old man who had died and been given to the hyenas, his bones crunched to nothing in those powerful jaws. Africa had borne him and in the end, Africa had taken him back. There was nothing left to show he had been except the memories of those who knew him, and these they shared with me.

I traded them—salves for salvation because, as I worked, I felt peaceful for the first time in a long while. I gave them food and milk and when they left, I sat on the veranda for a long time, thinking of them and how little of the promise of Fairlight was actually fulfilled.

In the afternoon Ryder came, walking his slow-hipped walk, and I stood in stillness, watching him come near. He stopped a foot away from me.

“Let’s go for a walk.”

I followed him without a word, and he led the way out of Fairlight and onto the savannah. He took a different track, a path beaten hard into the earth and leading to a high rock outcropping. We climbed it together and he gave me his hand to bring me up the last few feet to where he stood. We settled down on the rock and he pointed across the savannah. There, on a termite mound, sat a cheetah, slender and watchful.

“He’s beautiful,” I murmured.

“She,” he corrected quietly. “She just left her cubs two days ago and she’s hunting for herself now.”

“How do you know so much about her?”

She didn’t move as she surveyed the savannah. Only the lightest of breezes ruffled her fur as it did the long grasses. A small herd of Thomson’s gazelles grazed nearby, unaware of her presence.

“I’ve been keeping tabs on her for months.”

“Why? You don’t hunt cheetah.”