Circling the Sun (13 page)

When my exam results arrived several weeks later, I took the simple envelope off where I could be alone with it, my heart gunning, and broke the seal. Inside, instead of a dreadful notice telling me I’d failed, there was an official document, typed and signed.
MRS
.
B
.
PURVES
had been granted an English trainer’s licence, good until 1925. I ran my fingertips over my name and the date, the leaping scrawl of the secretary who’d endorsed it and all the corners and creases. Here was a stamp of legitimacy, my ticket to compete in a circle I’d observed for most of my life, straining towards the action from my father’s side. If only he could be here now. I longed to hand him the notice and hear even a few measured words about how proud he was of me. And he would be proud. I had rounded a new corner and could finally see a swath of territory I had only been able to dream about and guess at before. But it was a lonely, lopsided feeling—missing him even as I flared with hope, wanting him there fiercely though that was impossible.

That night D had his cook prepare a dinner to celebrate: thick gazelle chops that had been cooked over an open fire, preserved peaches in syrup, and an almond-scented blancmange custard that tasted like clouds. He played his favourite song, “All Aboard for Margate,” again and again, refilling my brandy glass until the entire evening seemed to tip pleasantly on one edge.

“You’re the best I’ve seen in a while,” D said as he wound up the gramophone for yet another encore. “Pure and natural instinct is what you have.”

“Thanks, D.”

“Aren’t you
pleased,
girl? You’re probably the only eighteen-year-old female horse trainer in the world!”

“Of course. But you know I’ve never been the type to do a jig.”

“Then I’ll do one for you. The papers will want your name, of course. Everyone will be talking about it.”

“If we win, they will. If we don’t they’ll say it’s because Delamere was daft enough to let a green girl run his horses.”

“We’ve got six weeks to worry about that. A bit more, actually.” He glanced at the mantel clock. “Tonight, we’re going to get stinking.”

B
efore sunrise on the opening day of the Jubaland Cup, I walked out of the Eastleigh stable in Nairobi and past the grandstand. The etched shape of Donyo Sabuk was scored onto the pale morning sky, and the big mountain, Kenya, shimmered silvery blue. Sometimes in the long dry season, the soil hardened into long cracks and gouges under the sod, wide enough to grab hold of a speeding hoof and drag it off-centre, destroying tendons. That wouldn’t happen today, though. The turf appeared flat and fast to me. The post had a fresh coat of white paint with two jaunty black stripes, making it look like a buoy fixed and still in a bright emerald sea.

Though the morning was smooth and still, soon thousands would fill the arena and the grandstand. Race days were magnetic things, drawing not just from Nairobi but all the nearby villages—millionaires and scrapers-by, the best-dressed ladies and the simpler ones, too, everyone poring over the racing forms, searching for a sign. There was money to be made on betting, but that had never interested me. Even as a girl, I had only wanted to press into the rail next to my father, far from the noise of the crowd in the stands, the owners in their elite boxes, the betting booths where who knew how much money changed hands. Races weren’t supposed to be pageants or cocktail parties. They were tests. Hundreds of hours of training came down to a few breathless moments—and only then would anyone know if the animals were ready, which would rise and which would stumble, how the work and the talent would match up to carry this horse through, while that one would be left wearing dust, the jockey ashamed or surprised or full of excuses.

There was plenty of room for magic in any race, too, for chance and for grit, for tragedy, if an animal went down, for unexpected reversals at the tape. I had always loved all of it—even what couldn’t be controlled or predicted. But there was a new urgency now that I was on my own, and so much more was at stake.

Reaching into the pocket of my trousers, I pulled out a telegram my father had wired back from Cape Town when I sent word of my licence. Already the sheet of pale-yellow paper was soft from my fingers, and the letters had begun to fade:
WELL DONE STOP ALL FINE HERE STOP WIN SOMETHING FOR ME
!
All sorts of magic happened on race day. But if I’d had the power to conjure anything, it would be for him to suddenly appear out of the crowd to stand next to me for those thunderous, dizzying minutes. That would mean so much more than winning—more than anything.

A few hours later, when Dynasty danced onto the track, I felt my pulse jump. Her coat gleamed. Her steps were high and springing and confident. She didn’t look like the six-year-old mare D had turned over to me months before, but like a queen. All around her, the other contenders were being led or ponied to the starting post. Some had running martingales to curb swinging heads; some were in tendon boots, while others wore blinker hoods to keep them on the straight and narrow. Jockeys soothed or prodded with crops as their horses skittered backwards into the barriers, jumpy and wild eyed, but Dynasty glided right through the chaos as though none of it involved her.

The starter’s hand climbed, then went still; the horses struggled in their places at the post, desperate to do what they had come for. The bell sounded, the horses breaking in a hiccup of colour and movement, twelve singular animals blurred and transposed. A clean and bolting start.

A quick bay gelding—the favourite—vaulted out first, the field loose around him, all of them drumming up the turf. The front-runners took the rail, the sounds of their hoofbeats rumbling viscerally. I felt them in my joints, like the drums of childhood
ngomas,
taking my heart for a ride. As the group barrelled down the home straight, I don’t think I breathed. Dynasty was there, gunning for the rail, all control and finely tuned muscle. Our jockey, Walters, wasn’t pressing or fighting her, just letting her go. She gained rhythm stride by stride, melting through the pack, sailing just above the bright turf. Walters floated, too, the blue-and-gold silks he wore butterfly light over the curves of Dynasty’s back.

In the grandstand, the cries of the crowd grew louder and shriller as the field pulsed for the far rail. The animals were like a storm moving whole, and then breaking, every strategy falling away, all caution gone. In the last few furlongs, nothing mattered but legs and length. Dynasty sailed through the final contenders and gained on the favourite, who seemed to stand still for her alone. She ran as if she were flying. As if she were dreaming the win, or winning in someone else’s dream. Then her nose was at the tape. The crowd exploded. She’d done it.

I had done it, too. Tears stung the corners of my eyes as I looked around for someone to embrace. A few of the other trainers came over to pump my hand, saying words that would have meant everything to me if they’d come from my father, and then Jock was suddenly at my elbow.

“Congratulations,” he said, leaning into my ear. The pressure of his fingertips led me through the bodies around us. “I knew you could win it.”

“Did you?”

“Your talent’s never been in question, has it?” I tried to ignore him, but he went on. “This will be good for business.”

Just like that, the flush of pride and gratitude I’d felt after Dynasty’s win winked out of me. He was pouncing on my success. When Dynasty was led into the winner’s enclosure and one of the newspapermen asked for my name and a photo, Jock stepped in to spell out
Purves
carefully. His hand stayed on my elbow or the small of my back like an immovable tether, but none of it was about me. He was only thinking of what greater notice meant for the possibility of new grain contracts or additions to our bloodstock.

Later it would come to me how this win meant more for him than me, strangely. As Dynasty’s trainer, I would receive a percentage of her prize money. If I one day managed to get her placed regularly, I might glean a good-enough salary to win financial independence, but that was a distant dream. Jock still had plenty of leverage as he loomed at my side, cheerfully considering his own gain as my husband and my keeper. It was shocking how quickly we’d become adversaries.

“Do you suppose there will one day be female trainers in England?” one of the newspapermen asked.

“I haven’t given it any thought,” I said. I posed for the photo, wanting to elbow Jock hard in the ribs—to send him right out of my circle and my light. Instead, I smiled.

D had always known how to celebrate. That night, as the liquor ran freely, he made red-faced elaborate toasts and took to the dance floor with any number of smartly dressed women while a five-piece band played whatever he asked, bribed by good champagne.

The Muthaiga Club was the very best Nairobi had to offer. Three miles from the centre of Nairobi, it was an oasis, with pebbled walls pink as a flamingo’s feather. Behind them, club members felt they’d earned the right to be there, to be waited on deferentially at one moment and surrender all restraint the next. You could bask by the tennis courts with your tall glass of gin and chipped ice, stable your best horse, whack glossy croquet balls over glossy bits of trimmed lawn, hire a European chauffeur to take you around, or simply get good and drunk on one of the blue-screened terraces.

I loved the club as much as anyone—the sitting rooms all done in dark hardwood flooring, the loose chintz-covered sofas and Persian carpets and framed hunting spoils—but I was still out of sorts. Jock had remained clamped to my side so completely I couldn’t enjoy myself for a moment. It was only when D came over with a nice bottle of aged whisky to share with Jock that I was able to bolt for the bar in the other room, slinking along the wall to escape notice.

The bodies on the dance floor were frenzied, as if everyone worried the night might pass before they’d reach their portion of happiness or forgetting. Race days always whipped everyone up into this state, and as the party had been going on for most of the day, the waiters and porters all looked exhausted from trying to keep up. When I got to the cocktail bar, the queue was several bodies deep.

“You could wither away waiting for gin here,” the woman just in front of me warned. She spoke with a clipped English accent and was tall and slim, wearing a deep-green Ascot gown and a matching ostrich-feather hat. “Thank God I planned ahead.” She reached into a small jet-bead handbag and pulled out a silver flask, handing it to me.

I thanked her and fumbled with the tiny silver stopper while she smiled.

“Good show today, by the way. I’m Cockie Birkbeck. We met at a race meeting years ago. I’m actually distantly related to you, on your mother’s side.”

The mention of my mother instantly unsettled me, as it always had. I took a healthy sip, feeling the fire in my nose and throat, and passed back the pretty flask. “I don’t remember meeting you.”

“Oh, it was ages ago. You were a child then and I was…younger. Don’t you
despise
this dry climate? It splits and shrivels everything, and gives you ten years for every two.”

“You’re beautiful,” I said plainly.

“Aren’t you a lamb for saying so? I’ll bet you’re still wishing that you were older, particularly in the world you’re in, elbowing around with burly men in the paddock?” She laughed and then tapped the shoulder of the man in front of her. “Can’t you speed things up, Blix? We’re languishing here.”

He turned and gave her a grin that was somehow youthful as well as hungry-looking. “That sounds vaguely sexual.”

“Everything’s vaguely sexual for you.”

He winked. “Don’t you love that about me?” He was stocky with a thick neck and squared shoulders, and his round face still had something of the schoolboy in it, though he must have been thirty or more.

“Bror Blixen, this is Beryl Clutterbuck.”

“It’s Purves now, actually,” I said awkwardly. “I’m married.”

“That
does
sound serious,” Cockie said. “Well, not to worry. You’re in very capable hands here.” She clasped one of my arms and one of Blix’s conspiratorially.

“Dr. Turvy has sent a prescription,” Blix said, “and medicinally speaking, I’d say we’re in the clear.”

“Dr. Turvy?” I laughed. “Is he your private physician?”

“His
imaginary
private physician,” Cockie said, shaking her head. “But I’ll say one thing for Turvy. He always does come through.”

As we found a corner near the dance floor and settled ourselves, I watched the swirl of bright faces and hoped Jock would be entertained enough by D’s liquor to give me a few more minutes of peace. Blix had the waiter bring three silver buckets and three bottles of pink champagne. “So none of us have to share if we don’t want to,” he said.

“It’s his leonine territorialism,” Cockie explained. “Our Blix is a marvellous hunter. It’s because he has their instincts.”

“It’s better than
working,
” he agreed. “I’m just back from the Belgian Congo. Up in the Haut-Uele, there are legends about elephants with four tusks. They have special names for them there and any number of stories about the mysterious powers they possess. A wealthy client of mine had heard about them and offered me double my usual rate if we saw one. We didn’t even have to shoot it, he said; he only wanted to see one in his lifetime.”

“And did you see one?”

He gave me a funny look and took a long pull on his glass. “She doesn’t know how to listen to stories, this one.”

“You have to let him draw it out, darling. Otherwise he doesn’t look half so brave or interesting.”

“Exactly so.” He winked at her. “We were out for three weeks—in the Ituri Forest, along the sticky marshes of the Congo. Sometimes you can go for months without seeing elephants, but we saw several dozen, and three or four of them great hulking males with ivory dragging the ground. They were perfect specimens, I tell you, but all two-tuskers. Meanwhile, my client was growing restless. The longer we stayed in the bush, the more certain he was that there was no such thing, and that we were out to hoodwink him and take his money.”

“You
are
there to take his money, Blickie darling.”