Circling the Sun (12 page)

B
it burrs. Tongue-tying. Saddling for exercise and saddling for races. There was shoeing and bandaging, conditioning and equipment. I had to learn to read track surfaces and stakes sheets, and calculate weight allowances. I had to know the diseases and ailments forward and back—bowed tendons and splints, foundering, bucked shins, bone chips, slab fractures, and quarter cracks. Thoroughbreds were glorious and also fragile in very specific ways. They often had small hearts, and the exertion of racing also made them susceptible to haemorrhaging in the lungs. Undetected colic could kill them—and if it did, that death would be on me.

There were things to look for in the conformation of the animal, the head, the legs, the chest, and many other things you couldn’t see, which were even more important. Each animal was its own written-out book or a map to study and then memorize, decisions made accordingly. To really know everything that went into this life would take for ever, and maybe not even then. The sheer scale and impossibility of that lent purity to my days at Soysambu. I walked from my cottage to the paddock, to the stables, to the track, and back to my cottage to read charts and tables until my eyes gave out.

In exchange for Pegasus’s stall and my own bunk, D gave me two horses to train. They were both past their prime, dull eyed and recalcitrant, but I was trying to prove myself. I would have to treat them like royalty. I laboured over their exercise and feeding schedules, filling notebooks, trying to meet them on their own territory, and to find or understand something untapped in them, something no one had yet seen.

Dynasty, a six-year-old mare, had a case of girth gall—tender blisters and raw chafed skin along her belly—that needed special care. Her groom had tried every kind of tack on her, but the sores never completely healed. He seemed embarrassed about this.

“You’re cleaning the tack well,” I told him. “I can see that…and it’s not too stiff. You’ve taken good care of her.”

“Yes, memsahib. Thank you.”

I crouched to get a better sense of the sores—some well scabbed over and some fresh—and then stood to have a good look at all of her.

“It might just be the way she’s made,” I told the groom, pointing. “See how her shoulders are tight and square. She doesn’t have much breathing room here, behind the elbows, so the girth squeezes close. Don’t put any tack on her for at least a week—no riding at all—just a lunge line for exercising. You also might try some of this.” I reached for a small vial in my pocket, a mixture of oils my father and I had always used with our horses, and which I had been tinkering with on my own, trying to perfect it. “To condition the skin.”

When I turned to leave the groom to his work, I saw that D’s ranch manager had been watching us. His name was Boy Long, and he was exotic-looking for these parts, with jet-black hair and a single gold hoop in one ear. His particular flair made me think of a pirate. “What’s in the tincture?” he wanted to know.

“Nothing unusual.”

He looked me up and down. “I don’t believe you, but you can keep your secret.”

A few days later I was standing along the paddock fence watching the groom lunge Dynasty when Boy came along. Already the mare had begun to heal, and her coat shone. Though Boy only leaned beside me for a while, watching and saying nothing, I felt his attention on me as much as on the horse.

“I thought D was crazy when he told me he’d hired a girl,” he finally said.

I shrugged, not taking my eyes off Dynasty. She was moving well, not at all tenderly. “I’ve been doing this all my life, Mr. Long.”

“I can see that. I like to be proved wrong every now and again. It keeps me on my toes.”

Boy was good at his job, I soon learned. He oversaw the workers on both sides of D’s operation, the horses and the sheep, and seemed always to know what was going on, and even what was about to happen. One night I awoke to a commotion outside my cottage and the smell of fire. I dressed quickly and stepped out to find that a lion had been spotted in the paddock.

The night was cold and I felt it gripping around my heart as I thought of a lion slinking full-shouldered and tawny through the compound, past my thin door. “What was taken?” I asked Boy. He stood surrounded by grooms holding torches and hurricane lamps. An oiled rifle was cocked open over his arm.

“Nothing. I got there in time.”

“Thank God. You were awake, then?”

He nodded. “I had a feeling I should be. Do you ever get that sense?”

“Sometimes.” I’d felt nothing tonight. I’d been sleeping like a baby. “Did you hit him?”

“No, but I’ll have one of the grooms sit up to make sure he doesn’t come back.”

I returned to my cottage and tried for sleep again, but a nervous feeling had lodged itself in my shoulders and my neck, and my mind wouldn’t quiet. Finally I gave up and walked to the stable to find a bottle we kept on hand in the office. Boy was there, having already found it himself. He poured for me and I thanked him, and said goodnight.

“Why not stay?” he asked. “We can keep each other company.” His words were offhand, but his look made it clear what he meant.

“What would my husband think about that?” I asked him. I didn’t want any of the men on the ranch to get the idea that I was available, particularly not this one, with his glinting earring and his bold eyes.

Boy only shrugged. “If you were really worried about your husband, you’d be at home, wouldn’t you?”

“I’m here to work.” But that didn’t satisfy him. His dark pupils stayed fixed on mine in a disbelieving way until I said, “The situation isn’t simple.”

“It rarely is. I have someone, too, you know. Back in Dorking. She isn’t built for the heat.”

“Doesn’t she miss you?”

“I don’t know,” he said. In two smooth moves he’d set down his glass and crossed the distance between us. He reached to either side of me, his hands cupping the wall, and leaned nearer until I could smell rye whisky and smoke, his face inches from mine.

“This isn’t a good idea.”

“Nights can get pretty long here.” He bent his mouth to my neck, but I flinched away, my shoulders unyielding. “All right,” he finally said, “I get the picture.” Then he smiled at me lazily and let me slip out of his arms.

When I went back to my cottage and lay down, closing my eyes, the lion wasn’t on my mind any more. I’d never met anyone as direct as Boy. It was unsettling and also a little thrilling to imagine wanting and being wanted so simply, without any claims of love or strings of collapsing promises. Men were a puzzle to me, even after a year of marriage. I knew nothing about love, let alone being anyone’s lover—but for now even a kiss from Boy was a dangerous idea.

Though Kenya was vast, there was surprisingly little privacy in our colony. Everyone seemed to know everyone else’s business, particularly when it was personal. I’d always been able to steer clear of all of that, being too young and inexperienced for anyone’s serious notice, but now I’d married a notable landowner and was meant to behave accordingly. And so it was that every few weeks, on a Saturday morning, I went home to Njoro to be a wife.

D taught me to drive and lent me the ramshackle wagon he used to haul cargo back and forth from the toolsheds and dip sheds. I preferred the view from horseback, but I learned to like and even crave the speed of the auto, and how it felt a little dangerous whipping along the narrow dirt road, whanging over deep potholes, my teeth rattling, dust in my hair. There were mud bogs to watch out for, and places where I knew if anything happened to strand me I could be in real trouble, but it was also exhilarating—especially in the first dozen or so miles. The nearer I grew to Njoro, though, the more strongly I felt Jock’s hold on me. I didn’t belong to myself. I hadn’t since I decided to say yes to his proposal, but now the reality of that sank in more deeply and seemed to stretch larger as I struggled with it, like a bog or a patch of quicksand. Njoro had always been my home, the place I loved best. Now the effort it took to spend even a few civil days a month in the same house as Jock, for the benefit of neighbouring farmers and anyone else who might be watching, was ruining it for me.

When I pulled up in D’s wagon, I nearly always got a chaste kiss on the cheek. We’d have a drink on the veranda and discuss what had happened on the farm while I was away, the servants milling around us, always happy to see me home. But as soon as night fell and we were alone, the mood turned chilly fast. Jock never tried to touch me sexually—that had never worked for us anyway, not even in the beginning. But every question he asked about my work at D’s and my plans felt proprietary.

“Is D looking out for you?” he wanted to know. “Making sure you don’t get into trouble?”

“What do you mean?”

“You always had your own rules about things. Like that boy you ran around with when I first met you.”

“Kibii?”

“That’s right.” He tipped his cocktail glass back and pulled the whisky along the rim through his teeth. “You were always a bit of a savage here, weren’t you?”

“I can’t think what you’re implying. And anyway, you seemed to admire my hunting with Kibii when we first met. Now I’m a savage?”

“I’m only saying that what you do reflects on me. The way you were brought up out here, running around with God knows who doing God knows what…and now you’re off at D’s, a woman alone surrounded by men. It smacks of trouble.”

“I’m
working,
not taking dozens of lovers.”

“I’d hear of it in an instant if you were,” he said flatly. His eyes flicked away and returned. “You’ve already put me in quite a position.”

“I’ve put
you
in a position? Just give me the damned divorce and let’s have done with it.”

Before he could answer there was a rustling just inside the house, and our houseboy, Barasa, came onto the veranda, ducking his head to show us he’d not meant to disturb us. “Does bwana want the evening meal served here?”

“No, in the house, Barasa. We’ll be in directly.”

When the boy had gone, Jock looked at me pointedly.

“What?” I asked. “The servants won’t tell tales.”

“No,” he said. “Usually not. But they always know the score, don’t they?”

“I don’t
care
what anyone knows.”

“Maybe not, but you should.”

We ate our meal in strained silence, all of the furniture seeming to lean heavily in from the walls. The servants were very quiet as they came and went, and it was awful to sit there, wanting to scream but saying nothing. Jock was terrified I was going to embarrass him—or embarrass him further. That was all he seemed to think of now as he flexed and cautioned me, running thick strands of wire around the charade of our life together. He’d always been good at fences. I had known that from the beginning, but I hadn’t guessed how desperate I could feel bound up inside one.

When I could finally excuse myself to the small guest bedroom where I was sleeping, I felt chapped and raw and prodded at. I barely slept at all that night, and the next morning, though I generally stayed for lunch, I bolted for the wagon at first light.

Back at Soysambu, Jock’s warnings and expectations continued to wear on me, but only in weak moments, when I let myself think of him. Most of the time I could wrestle my worries about my own life clear away to focus on my horses and each day’s training schedule. I tethered myself to morning gallops and feed lists and details of grooming. Dynasty and Shadow Country, my two charges, were both coming along well, but there was always the chance I could take them further still; bring them even closer to perfect form. Puzzling over their care was how I got to sleep each night, how I turned off my own doubts and fears as simply as blowing out the lamp. The work was what mattered. It alone would get me through.

When the day of my exam finally arrived, D drove me to Nairobi. Over the roar of the engine, we talked about the upcoming race meeting, the Jubaland Cup, weighing the stakes and the possible competition. We didn’t speak of the exam itself or the way my nerves had climbed up into my shoulders and neck, or how I was missing my father something terrible and wishing to God he could be there. We didn’t talk about Jock and how I
had
to succeed that day to be free of him. There wasn’t room for a whisper of remorse or self-doubt, and so even when I turned up for the test and saw the proctor’s small, dismissive eyes, I didn’t falter. He was the marshal of the Royal Kenyan Race Association, and his office was hot and airless. As he glowered at me from behind his broad desk, I could guess what he was thinking. Women weren’t trainers, not in Kenya or anywhere else. I wasn’t yet nineteen years old, either. But I had learned to thrive when others assumed little or nothing of me—like when Kibii or the other
totos
in the Kip village looked down their noses, goading me to stretch for more. I was still a child to the marshal, no doubt, as well as female—but if he assumed I’d fall short, that was enough to quiet the last of my worries and make me jump higher, try harder, and prove him wrong.