Circling the Sun (17 page)

A
few weeks later, D called me in from the paddock and handed over a telegram addressed to me. I assumed it was a rare bit of news from my father—or perhaps some sort of demand from Jock—but the envelope had a smeared return address from London. Turning away from D, I broke the sticky seal with a sharp twinge of dread.
DEAR BERYL
—I read—
HARRY HAS DIED AND THE BOYS AND I WILL RETURN TO THE COLONY STOP WOULD YOU PLEASE LOOK FOR LODGINGS
?
—
WE DON’T KNOW ANYONE AND MONEY IS DEAR STOP MOTHER
.

Mother?
That word alone felt like a slap. I’d pushed her memory away long ago, as far as I could, but it lurched dizzily to life now. My eyes raced over the few sentences again. My throat was as dry as dust.

“Everything all right?” D asked.

“Clara’s returning to Kenya,” I said numbly.

“Good grief. I thought she’d vanished for good.”

“Apparently not.” I handed him the flimsy paper, as if it would explain anything. “Who’s Harry?”

“Harry?” He was quiet for a moment, reading, and then he sighed heavily and raked his hands through his hair. “Let’s have a nip of brandy, shall we?”

It wasn’t easy to drag the whole story out of D, but the drink worked to pry him open a little, and me as well. After an hour I had the gist of it. Harry Kirkpatrick was a captain my mother had met in her second year in Kenya, at a dance in Nairobi after a race meeting. Their involvement was meant to be a secret, but those kinds were hard to keep. By the time she left for London with him, Dickie in tow, the scandal had blazed through the colony.

“Obviously she married him at some point,” D said, “though I can’t say when. We fell completely out of touch.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me the truth?”

D cupped his brandy glass, thinking, and then said, “It might have been a mistake. Who’s to say? Everyone wanted to protect you from the worst of it. Florence was the loudest of all. She insisted it would only make everything worse.”

I thought of the day I’d pored over the map of England in Lady D’s atlas, and her saying she could tell me things about my mother if I wanted to know. Had she planned to invent a tale, a doctored version of the truth? Or had she begun to feel it was time I understood what had really happened? It was impossible to do more than guess now.

“So the whole story about how
hard
things were for Clara, that was just rubbish?”

“Your mother
was
terribly unhappy, Beryl. Green Hills was in shambles then. It took every drop of energy Clutt could give it. I think that’s why she latched on to Kirkpatrick. Perhaps she saw him as her only way out.”

“But she had responsibilities,” I spat. “She should have been thinking of us, too.”
Me,
I meant—for Dickie had been fine, he’d been chosen. “What was this Harry like anyway?”

“Handsome, as I remember, and very attentive to her. She was a beautiful woman, you know.”

“Was she?” My father had managed to hide or throw out every likeness, every last reminder—particularly once Emma came along. He had rooted Clara out of our lives so well she might never have been there at all, and I saw why. She’d gone off with another man, hurting and embarrassing him, very much as I had done with Jock; but for us there were no children to think of. “Why couldn’t he have told me the truth?”

“Your father did what he thought was best. Sometimes it’s difficult to know what that is.”

I swallowed back rising tears, hating the fact that my mother could make me cry—that she still could, after all these years. But my feelings wouldn’t be tamped down. They flooded over me, so far past my control that I had to wonder if I’d only
imagined
surviving Clara’s leaving when I was a girl. What if the strength and invincibility I’d felt then—feats of daring, leopard hunts, and rides over the savannah on Pegasus, my ears roaring with speed and sharp freedom—were only the thinnest layer of straw over a gaping hole? Either way, I felt bottomless now. “Am I really supposed to be nice and to show her around? As if nothing whatever has happened?”

“Oh, Beryl, I don’t know what to tell you. She has her faults like the rest of us, I suppose.” He came over and clamped my shoulders with work-reddened hands. “You’ll do what’s right for you.”

If D felt certain that I’d make my way towards clarity, I had my doubts. Clara’s telegram continued to sting, wrenching me back through time. It was so strange to be learning only now why she had left the colony, the crux of the story buried for decades. And though it didn’t surprise me that my father had hidden the truth and his feelings and forged ahead with life on the farm, I couldn’t stop wishing he had told me. She’d left me, too, after all. Her going had changed everything, and now she was returning? It didn’t make sense. Why would she think she could find her feet in Kenya, a place she couldn’t get away from quickly enough? And how had she summoned the nerve to ask for my help? How was any of this my responsibility?

Angry and baffled, I was more than tempted to tell Clara to find her own way around—but she wasn’t the only one I had to consider. She hadn’t mentioned Dickie in her cable, though her casual reference to “the boys” meant she and the captain had had children together. Now those boys were fatherless and about to be dragged into an utterly foreign world. What would they think about that?

As I struggled with Clara’s plea, Denys suddenly came to mind. He had mentioned the baroness’s land and empty house less than a week ago. He’d meant it for me, for a friendly visit, but I couldn’t help but be struck by the opportunity, and by the perfect sense of timing. Though I still hadn’t entirely sorted out that I
wanted
to help Clara, her need and this solution seemed mysteriously matched up and sorted out already, as if the whole situation had been on its way for years and years. As if we were all being drawn together by unseen hands. It nearly felt inevitable.

I told Boy and D that I would be away for a few days, and went to saddle Pegasus, feeling better than I had in some while. I still didn’t have the slightest idea of what it would mean to have Clara back in the colony and in my life, but I was on my way to see Denys again, and perhaps tell him a story. It was a warm afternoon, I was on a strong and beautiful horse, and I had a plan.

K
aren Blixen’s farm lay twelve miles west of Nairobi, along a rutted road that climbed steadily. The altitude was thousands of feet higher than Delamere’s or Jock’s, and the climbing forest cut sharp ridges into the pale sky. A long valley swung to one side of the road, strung through with carpets of orange lilies, the kind that grew up wild everywhere after it rained. The air was sweet with them, and also the white-flowering coffee plants, which smelled like jasmine. Everything seemed to sparkle, just like champagne. Denys had been right about that.

Though I was fairly sure the baroness would at least consider letting the house to my mother—it was sitting empty, after all—I felt a twinge or two about coming unannounced. Settlers were spread out so widely in Kenya that visitors were generally welcomed however and whenever they popped up. But I didn’t know if Denys had yet mentioned me to her, or what their relationship was exactly. My curiosity had been simmering about them both, and I felt a sense of anticipation—of being on the verge of something interesting.

The substantial bungalow was built of grey stone with a pitched and tiled roof, and sturdy-looking gables. A long porch swept all the way around the house, as did a wide, groomed lawn. Two large deerhounds sunned in the grass as I rode up, blue-grey and whiskered, with lovely pointed muzzles. They didn’t bark or seem troubled by me, so I dismounted and let them have my hands to smell.

I looked up as a woman came out of the house. She wore a simple white housedress and was slenderly built, with very fair skin and dark hair. Her face was most striking for its angles, and for her eyes, deep set under feathery brows. Her gaze and her sharp fine nose gave her the look of a pretty hawk. I felt myself squirm, suddenly embarrassed.

“I’m sorry, I should have wired you,” I said, giving her my name. “Is Denys around?”

“He’s out on safari, actually. I don’t expect him for at least a month.”

A month?
But before I could feel deflated or more awkward about where to begin, she went on to say that Denys had spoken of me, and that she’d been keen for some company. “I haven’t spoken to anyone but the dogs for days, it seems.” She smiled and her features softened. “I’ve just got some new records for my phonograph, too. Do you like music?”

“I do, though I’m not very educated about it.”

“I’m trying to learn more myself. My friends tell me my taste is too old-fashioned.” She pulled a small face and sighed. “Let’s see to your horse then.”

Karen’s house reminded me of my childhood visits to Lady D at Equator Ranch. It was the quality of her things, the civility in the smallest details. Inside the broad front door, richly coloured carpets ran over the mahogany parquet, connecting the rooms and warming them. There were silky wood tables, plump chintz-covered sofas and overstuffed chairs, thick draperies at every window, flowers in vases and flowers in bowls. She had shelves and shelves of finely bound books. As I looked at them, I felt very aware of my spotty education. I ran my hand along a row of their spines. My fingertips came away with no dust. “Have you really read them all?” I asked.

“Of course. They’ve saved my life many times over. Nights can drip like molasses here, especially when good friends have gone away.”

I wondered if she meant Denys, but she didn’t elaborate. Instead, she showed me to a small guest room so I could wash, and then we met again on the veranda for tea. Her houseboy, Juma, held the china pot and poured for us, white gloves flapping around his thin black wrists. He passed a plate of biscuits and sweets with a formality I hadn’t seen in many servants, not in these parts.

“I’ve come to ask a favour,” I told her when Juma had gone. “But maybe you’ve already guessed that.”

“You’ve come to stay then?” Her accent rolled and swooped. Her dark eyes were pretty, but I found myself squirming under them a bit. She seemed to watch rather than simply look at things.

“Not exactly. My mother is returning to Kenya after many years away. I thought your house might do if it’s still empty. She’ll pay you a fair price, of course.”

“Why, yes. There hasn’t been anyone in it for so long. It will be nice to have her here, and for you, too.”

“She’s not actually…” I had no idea how to explain it all. “We don’t know each other that well.”

“I see.” Again her dark eyes fixed on me, making me want to fidget in my chair. “It’s very kind of you to help her in that case.”

“I suppose so,” I said, not wanting to say more. Above her house on the ridge, five deeply blue hills cut a rising and falling line. They drew my eye back and forth.

“Aren’t they wonderful?” Karen said. “I love them indecently.” She held up her fist to model how the shape of the ridge was like the knuckles of her hand. “There’s nothing like them in Denmark. Nothing like any of what I have here.” She drew a slim silver case from her pocket and lit a cigarette, shaking out the match and plucking a thread of tobacco from her tongue, all without taking her eyes from my face. “Your browned skin looks so wonderful with your hair, you know,” she finally said. “You really are one of the most beautiful girls I’ve seen in these parts. And I read about your racing successes in the Nairobi paper. That can’t be an easy life for a woman, and the society isn’t terribly gentle here, is it?”

“Do you mean the gossip?”

She nodded. “It’s such a small town, Nairobi. So provincial—which is funny considering how vast Kenya is. You’d think we were all crouched up next to one another, whispering between windows, instead of hundreds and hundreds of miles apart.”

“I hate it. Why do people hunger to know every nasty thing? Shouldn’t some things be private?”

“Does it trouble you that much, what others think?” Her face was sharply and darkly beautiful—and her deep-set onyx eyes had an intensity I hadn’t seen very often. She was older than me by ten or fifteen years, I guessed, but her attractiveness was hard to ignore.

“I just feel a bit over my head sometimes. I think I was too young to get married.”

“If it were another man, the right man, age might not be an issue. The rightness of the match changes everything.”

“You’re a romantic then.”

“A romantic?” She smiled. “I never thought so, but lately I don’t know. I’ve come to think differently about love and marriage. It’s not a proper philosophy. I don’t want to bore you, in any case.” She fell quiet for a moment, and a small speckled owl glided towards her from an open window on the porch, as if she’d called it silently. It settled on her shoulder. “This is Minerva. She always turns up for company…or maybe it’s the biscuits.”