A Spear of Summer Grass (4 page)

After we boarded the train again with the other passengers—I was amused to see that Mr. Wickenden was markedly less friendly when he was nursing a small burn and a large hangover—we set off on the last leg of our trip to Nairobi. Here the plains were vast, opening up before us like an invitation. There were clusters of bushes and in the distance I could make out moving shapes I was certain were herds of wildebeest. I pointed out to Dora the sight of Mt. Kilimanjaro in the distance to the south, just over the border in German-controlled Tanzania.

“Look at its snowy peak,” I instructed her as I thumbed through the guidebook. “It’s as if the mountain were wearing a clever little nightcap. It says here that Mt. Kilimanjaro used to belong to the Kenyan side of the boundary until Queen Victoria decided to smudge the border a bit to give the mountain to her grandson for his birthday.”

Dora was fixed on the view. “That explains a good deal of what was wrong with the Kaiser. If the Queen of England and Empress of India is willing to redraw a map to give you an entire mountain as a birthday present, it’s just a small step from there to thinking you have a right to plunge the whole world into war and kill thousands of people.”

I didn’t say anything, but Dora was familiar enough with my silences to know a sharp one.

“I’m sorry, Delilah. I didn’t think.”

I shrugged. “It’s been nine years since Johnny died. I should be able to talk about the war without falling to pieces.”

We were quiet a moment, then Dora sat up, exclaiming, “Zebra! A whole herd of them, running alongside the train—look, Delilah, here they come!”

Sure enough, an entire herd of zebra had apparently decided to keep pace with the train, which wasn’t very hard to do. The poor old engine could have been outrun by a small child with a limp. But the zebra were making an event of it, tossing their short manes and snorting as they ran alongside. They were so close I could almost put a hand out and touch one stripy coat. Dora and I hung out the window to yell encouragement to them as they kicked up clouds of fine red dust that settled in our mouths and ears.

“We look like red Indians,” I told her.

“Don’t smile so much—it’s getting in your teeth,” she answered, smiling just as broadly.

Other passengers were hanging out as well to snap photographs or just feel the cool savannah breeze as it passed. I could smell the zebra, a horsey odour of sweat and grass and something musty riding just underneath. I was still smiling when Dora turned to me.

“I’ve often wondered—did you love any of them? The others who came after Johnny?”

She didn’t look at me and I didn’t look at her. Some questions are so direct the only way to ask them is sideways.

“What would you say if I told you I loved all of them and none?”

“I’d say you were dodging the question.”

“Then call me the Artful Dodger,” I told her.

She didn’t say anything, but the sigh she gave was eloquent enough. It said she got what she expected and less than she hoped.

“Fine. You want a real answer? The truth is I have loved them all when I remembered to. But it’s easy to forget.”

“I don’t see how.”

“You close your eyes and suddenly he’s not there anymore. What you loved, or thought you loved, just isn’t there, and there is a man-shaped hole in your memory of where he used to be. The sad part is when it happens when he’s sitting at the same table or lying in the same bed. You can turn and look at him and not even remember his name because he was just a visitor. He was a man who was only passing through your heart, and you never really made a place for him, so he just keeps passing. My husbands since Johnny have been passing men. Not a stayer among them.”

“And Johnny?”

“Johnny was a stayer,” I told her, wiping the red dust from my face. “That Johnny was a real stayer.”

Dodo was done asking questions then, and even if she wasn’t, I was finished answering. We watched the zebra for a while, until they faded back and stood, lathered up, their striped sides heaving as they watched us move farther and farther away.

Dora reached for the guidebook. “It says here the telegraph wires are on poles that are higher than customary on account of the giraffes,” she read.

“Tell me more,” I ordered, and she did, reading from the guidebook until her voice was hoarse, reading until the flat, tilted plains of Africa ran us up to Nairobi, reading until I wasn’t thinking about Johnny anymore but about telegraph wires and giraffes and man-eating lions grinding up the bones of the dead.

* * *

A little past noon we rolled into Nairobi, a flat town coated in red dust that looked as if it had been scooped up somewhere in India and plunked down in the middle of the African savannah. The streets of Nairobi were teeming gently with people bent on the business of civilisation. There were people of every description—purposeful Indian clerks jostling with the darker–skinned native Africans who moved with slow grace through the throng. Here and there were white faces, most meticulously guarded from the equatorial sun by double terais or
sola topees.
The white folks were the only ones who strode freely, keeping to the fitful shade of the blue gum trees that lined the street, as the Indians and Africans all stepped quickly out of their way to walk in the sun. It was nothing new to me. I had spent too much time in Louisiana watching the black folks carefully keeping out of the way of the whites.

The streets were paved and there were electric wires hanging high overhead where colourful birds perched and monkeys swung hand over hand. There were plenty of motorcars, but the streets were choked with oxcarts as well, and rickshaws scuttled by, leaving the pushcarts to trundle in their wake, slogging through mule dung and rotting fruit. The air was pungent with both, and they combined with woodsmoke and the gum leaves and the sunburned red soil to give Africa its own unique perfume. I inhaled it deeply until Dora dragged me back from the window, scolding that I would make a spectacle of myself.

I combed out my hair and powdered my nose and lacquered on a fresh coat of lipstick as we pulled into the station. I could hear a commotion on the platform, and Dodo darted a glance at me, her eyeballs rolling white.

“There can’t be reporters here waiting,” she muttered. “There just can’t.”

“There can and there probably are,” I retorted. “Oh, Dodo, I know they’re a misery, but just put your head down and carry on. They’ll stop when they get a picture.”

I handed off everything except my handbag to her and smoothed out my silk skirt. I had decided upon white for my arrival in Nairobi and everything was the same arctic shade, from my suede shoes to the fur stole I draped over my arm. It was far too warm to wear it, but the fur was simply too sweet to pack away. I straightened my stockings and squared my shoulders as I stepped from the train, bracing myself for the onslaught of cameras and reporters.

Just as I set foot on the platform, Mr. Wickenden also emerged from the train. He gave me a cool smile.

“Miss Drummond.” He lifted his hat.

“Mr. Wickenden. I hope the invitation to visit still stands. I would hate to think we couldn’t be friends.”

I arched a brow, and he hesitated, then grinned. “Africa’s a big place, Miss Drummond, but it’s entirely too small for grudges. We shall be neighbours, after all, and we must stick together out here.”

He lifted his hat again and moved to offer his hand.

Before I could take it, I heard a roar over the gathered throng. It must have been a hell of a roar, too, for me to hear it over the chaos of the Nairobi station, but in that moment everything stopped. The shouts of the porters, the wailing babies, the cries of the vendors—everything went silent and heads swivelled to the end of the platform where a pirate stood, booted feet planted wide as he surveyed the scene, hands fisted at his hips.

He wasn’t a pirate of course, but that’s the first impression I ever had of him and first impressions die hard. He was dressed haphazardly, with a filthy shirt tucked into even filthier trousers that were themselves tucked into a high pair of scuffed leather riding boots. His sleeves were rolled back and his collar was open, and every muscle seemed to vibrate with rage. He wore a beaten leather Stetson jammed down on his head, throwing his face into shadow. He strode straight to one of the native fellows and said something unintelligible in the native lingo. The man promptly handed over a long, slender whip. The pirate took it and walked directly to where Anthony Wickenden was still reaching for my hand. He didn’t even pause before he reached out and grasped Wickenden by the shoulders and lifted him clean off his feet. He threw Wickenden to the platform. Then he raised the whip, and the first crack of it was so loud the sound echoed straight down to the base of my spine.

What commenced was the bloodiest thrashing I had ever seen in my life, and when it was done, Wickenden was rolling on the platform, spitting blood and testing his loosened teeth.

“Goddamn you, White,” he managed to say before he rolled over and heaved out his stomach.

His assailant had lost his hat in the fray, and he bent to pick it up, leaning close over Mr. Wickenden as he did so. He pitched his voice low, but I heard him quite distinctly. “I saw the bruises, Tony. If you ever so much as think about touching her again, I will kill you—so slowly you will beg me to finish you off. Do you understand me?”

Wickenden spat out another mouthful of blood and gave a short groan by way of reply.

The pirate clapped his hat back onto his head and strode off, tossing the whip back to its owner without even breaking stride. There was a moment of sustained silence, and then the crowd began to move again, shouting and pushing as porters hurried to the injured man and the rest began to spread the story of what they’d just seen. A flashbulb went off in my face and some ferrety fellow asked me for a story, but before I could give him a piece of my mind, a slender gentleman appeared at my elbow.

“Miss Drummond, I presume? I’m Bates, Government House. I am afraid I must ask you to come with me.” I didn’t bother to protest. He had tucked my hand through his arm and towed me swiftly away.

“Delilah! Where are you going?” Dodo shrieked from behind me. I shrugged, but the gentleman turned and called over his shoulder.

“Government House. You may rendezvous with Miss Drummond at the Norfolk Hotel.”

He hurried me through the crowds and out of the station and down the street to Government House. I thought of invoking the name of Sir William Kendall, but decided to wait until a more opportune time. We entered through the wide doors and proceeded straight up a broad staircase of polished wood, down a few corridors and stopped outside a closed door. A pair of chairs had been arranged outside, and to my astonishment, I saw the assailant from the platform had already taken up occupancy of one of them. He looked as cool and unruffled as if he’d spent the morning totting up figures in a ledger instead of beating a man sideways.

Mr. Bates stopped and indicated the vacant chair. “Wait here, please, Miss Drummond.”

He disappeared inside the closed door and I heard voices from within. I seated myself as instructed and immediately applied myself to a study of my companion. He looked out of place in the polished rectitude of the Government House, with his scuffed boots and unshaven chin. I noticed that his earlobes had been pierced, and through each hole he had threaded a small gold hoop. Pirate indeed. His hat sat on his knee while his hands rested loosely on his thighs—big, capable hands mapped with scars and calluses. His hair was a disgrace, tangled and in desperate need of a shampoo and a cut. In a gentler climate it might have been a soft brown, but the African sun had burnished it to gold, the same colour as the stubble at his jaw, and his face was weathered bronze, a web of tiny wrinkles around his eyes from squinting at horizons too hard for too many years. On one tanned wrist he wore an odd collection of bracelets, some beaded, some braided, and one slender leather thong strung with what looked like an assortment of teeth and claws. Underneath the bracelets I could see scars marring his left arm, long thin whips of white stretching from his wrist to disappear under the rolled cuff of his shirt. I shuddered lightly and looked away. Everything about the man told a story if someone cared to listen. I picked up a magazine from the table and pretended to read.

While I had been studying him, he had been returning the favour, letting his gaze run slowly from my feet to my hair and back again. “Sorry about your shoes,” he said. His voice was low and a little rough, but his vowels were tidy and his accent was not English but not quite American either.

I peered down at the snowy suede, now indelibly marked with bright crimson souvenirs of the beating. I turned my ankle, looking at my foot from different angles.

“Oh, I don’t know. I might start a new fashion,” I told him.

“You’re awfully calm about the whole thing,” he remarked.

I shrugged. “Didn’t he have it coming?”

He laughed, a short, almost mirthless sound, and leveled his gaze directly at me. His eyes were strikingly blue, like pieces of open sky on a clear, clear day. He looked through them with an expression of perfect frankness, and the beauty of those eyes combined with that cool detachment was powerful. I wondered if he knew it.

“He did. He beat his wife.”

“And the lady is a friend of yours?”

A slow smile touched his mouth. It was an expressive mouth, and he used it well, even when he didn’t speak.

“You could say that,” he said.

I lifted a brow to indicate disapproval, and he laughed again, this time a real laugh. The sound of it was startling in that small space, and I felt the rumble of it in my chest just as I had the crack of his whip.

“Don’t look so disapproving, Miss Drummond. I would have thought the notion of a friendship between the sexes would be the last thing to shock you.”

“I see my reputation has preceded me,” I said, smoothing my skirt primly over my knees.

“You’ve already made the betting book at the club,” he told me, holding me fast with those remarkable eyes.