Circling the Sun (20 page)

“These birds have brains the size of coffee cherries,” Denys explained, hoisting his slim-line Rigby effortlessly onto his shoulder. “If you aim wide, they’ll often gambol right into the shot.”

“Why not shoot into the sky?”

“It’s somehow not enough. They need to feel the whizzing of the cartridge to panic properly.” He sighted down the barrel and took expert aim. The group startled as one animal, and then went blundering off in a noisy scatter, awkward as unmanned wheelbarrows.

We laughed at them—it was impossible not to—and then made sure the fencing was secure again. After that we walked together to the top of the ridge to see Karen’s view. Her deerhound, Dusk, led the way while I trailed a little behind, thinking about how lightly Denys wore his body. There wasn’t the smallest twinge of self-consciousness in him. He knew how to stand and where to put his arms and his feet, and how to accomplish what needed doing—and never seemed to doubt himself or any part of the world he moved in. I understood why Karen was drawn to him, even if she still cared for Blix and appeared determined to remain his wife.

“Where did you get your keen eye?” I asked him when I’d caught up.

“On the golf links at Eton, I suppose.” He laughed. “What about yours?”

“How do you know I have one?”

“Don’t you?”

“I learned from the Kips on my father’s land. You should see me with a slingshot.”

“As long as I’m out of range.” He smiled. “I’d like that.”

“Bror taught me to shoot,” Karen said as she fell into line with us. “At first I didn’t understand why anyone would want to do it. But there’s something sort of ecstatic in it, isn’t there? Not bloodlust but a powerful connection you feel with all of life. Maybe that sounds cruel.”

“Not to me. Not if it’s done with honour.” I was thinking of
arap
Maina, of his warrior’s skill but also the way he had great respect for even the smallest creature. I’d felt that so strongly whenever I’d hunted with him, but also every time I’d walked beside him, as I was doing with Denys now. For some reason, being near Denys seemed to put me in touch with those years at Green Hills. Maybe it was because I saw a graceful and utterly competent warrior in him and was reminded of the warrior in myself, the bit of Lakwet I still carried with me.

By then we’d climbed above the coffee plants and thorn thickets and a narrow, twisting riverbed winking with quartz. The hill flattened out into a kind of plateau, and from there we could see straight down into the Rift Valley, its crags and ridges like pieces of a broken bowl. The rain had finally cleared, but a billowy ring of clouds rested over Kilimanjaro to the south, its flat top painted with snow and shadows. East and a little north, the Kikuyu Reserve drew itself out in a long rolling plain all the way to Mount Kenya, a hundred miles or more away.

“You can see how I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” Karen said. “Denys wants to be buried here.”

“A pair of eagles have an eyrie somewhere nearby,” he said. “I like the idea of them soaring nobly over my carcass.” He squinted into the sun, his face brown and healthy, his long limbs throwing purple shadows behind him. There was a single line of perspiration running along his back between his shoulder blades, and his white cotton sleeves were rolled over his smooth, tanned forearms. I couldn’t imagine him any other way but this: every inch of his body absolutely and completely alive.

“The Kikuyu put out their dead for the hyenas,” I said. “If we could choose, I think I’d take eagles, too.”

I
n September, Ringleader ran for his life at the St. Leger and placed second without a waver or a flinch, no swelling, no whiff of his troubled history, as if he’d been reinvented. When I stood at the edge of the winners’ enclosure and watched D accept his silver cup, I felt good about the work I’d done, that I’d read Ringleader correctly and saw what he needed to become great again—what he was meant to be.

Everyone had come to town for the race. Eastleigh was overrun with grooms and trainers, so D arranged to have a canvas tent put up on the lawn of the club for me, with my name on a stake out front. It wasn’t glamorous. I had to stoop in half to climb inside, crawling through mosquito cloth, but Berkeley thought it might be fun to have a drink there. He turned up with a chilled bottle, and we sat outside the tent flap on stools.

As always, he was turned out in beautiful clothes, but he looked pale. Perhaps he’d grown thinner, too, but when I asked about his health, he brushed me off. “You see there?” he pointed to a small cottage not far away in a grove of eucalyptus trees. It was made of stucco, with a rounded door and its own miniature garden—like something from a storybook. “That’s where Denys stayed for years…before he moved out to Ngong.”

“You should have told me about Denys and the baroness. They’re in love, aren’t they?”

Berkeley’s eyes grazed over mine. “Should I have? I thought you weren’t interested.” We fell silent for a few minutes as he refilled our champagne glasses. Swarms of bubbles crested into buttery-looking foam. “In any case, I’m not sure how long it will last.”

“Because Denys can’t be caught?”

“There’s ‘settling down,’ and then there’s Denys. He brought her back a ring from Abyssinia made of such soft gold it can be shaped to fit any finger. She’s been wearing it like an engagement ring, missing the point, of course. Not that I don’t love Tania”—he used Denys’s pet name for Karen—“I do. But she shouldn’t forget who Denys is. Trying to domesticate him won’t work. It’s certainly not the way to his heart.”

“If the reins are too tight, why has he moved there?”

“He loves her, of course. And it makes some things easier.” He combed his moustache with his fingertips absentmindedly. “She’s had some fairly brutal headaches lately. Money trouble.”

“You heard about the fiasco with my mother, I’m sure.”

“Ah yes.” He grimaced. “The widow Kirkpatrick and the leaking rooftop.”

“I’m still so mortified.”

“The rent on Mbagathi would only have been a drop in the bucket anyway.” His eyes lit up for a brief moment at his own joke before he said, “Where do things stand with your mother now?”

“Damned if I know. She’s in town somewhere, I heard. The whole situation is more and more bizarre. Why are people so complicated?”

He shrugged. “What would you hope for with her—if it could be anything you liked?”

“Honestly, I couldn’t even say. To care less, maybe. She was away for so long, I didn’t imagine she could still do harm, but now…” I let my voice trail off.

“My father died when I was young. We all thought it was rather fortunate at first. It simplified all sorts of things. But over time…well. Let’s just say I’ve developed a theory that only the vanished truly leave their mark. And I still don’t feel I’ve sorted it out. Maybe we never do survive our families.”

“Oh, dear. And this is meant to cheer me up?”

Under his moustache, his lips stretched into a wan smile. “Sorry, darling. At least Tania hasn’t held your mother’s bad behaviour against you; I’m certain of it. I’m riding out there later for dinner. Come along.”

I shook my head. “I’m thinking of turning in early.”

“You have the energy of ten men and you know it.” He fixed me with a prying look. “I think you’re pining over Denys, and if you are, darling, he’s—”

“No, Berkeley.” I cut him off. “No warnings, and no more advice. I can fend for myself, thank you very much, and if knocks are coming my way, I’ll find a way to take them, all right? I have a hard skull.”

“You do,” he conceded, “though I’m not sure anyone’s is hard enough. Not when it comes to these sorts of things.”

We finished the bottle, and he went off to Ngong while I lit the lamp and tucked myself into the cot in my tent, pulling the little volume of
Leaves of Grass
from my satchel. I had made off with it like a thief months before—and couldn’t quite bring myself to give it back, not yet. Opening the book I read,
I think I could turn and live with animals.
What moved me about the poem, I realized, was that Denys had seen me in it. The self-sufficiency and free-spiritedness Whitman was celebrating, the connection to wild things and wildness—that was a part of me, and Denys, too. We recognized these things in each other, no matter what else was true or possible.

A breeze lifted the canvas flaps and stays. Through a triangle of mosquito netting, the night pulsed. There were a host of stars in the sky, all of them close and sharp.

I
n November, Karen hosted a shooting party and invited me to come and stay for a few days. Between Boy and Jock and a string of new, bewildering thoughts about Denys, part of me wondered if it was wise to accept—but I did.

When I arrived, Denys and Karen were playing host and hostess to a houseful of guests including Ginger Mayer, whom I’d never met before but had heard about from Cockie. Apparently she had been Ben’s lover for ages, and somehow the two women remained friends. They were both on the lawn when I turned up, playing a game that looked something like golf and something like cricket, using squash racquets, croquet mallets, and even a riding crop. Ginger wore a flowing silk dress that she’d knotted between her legs to form culottes. She was beautiful, with crimped auburn hair and freckles. She and Cockie could have been sisters as they raced around each other to swat at the ratty-looking leather-seamed ball.

“I’m surprised to see you here,” I said to Cockie when she came up to say hello. “I thought Karen wasn’t speaking to you.”

“She still isn’t, not technically, but some sort of truce is in the works. Maybe it’s because she’s finally got what she wants.” We both gazed over to where Karen and Denys stood on the veranda looking over dozens of bottles of wine, very much the master and mistress of the house. “How are things with Jock?”

“We’re at a stalemate, I think. I’ve been trying to press for the divorce, but he won’t respond. Not reasonably anyway.”

“I’m sorry, darling. But it all has to get sorted soon, doesn’t it? Even the worst things end…that’s how we go on.”

When she danced back to the game with her racquet, I went inside and saw that Karen had outdone herself. Candles and flowers were everywhere, and the table was set with her most beautiful china. Each surface and view had been choreographed, perfectly arranged to bring comfort, and also admiration. Karen might write and paint, but this was another kind of art, and she did it well.

“Is there some special occasion?” I asked her.

“Not really. I’m just so happy I don’t want to keep it to myself.” Then she went off to instruct Juma about some detail of the menu while I stood in place, reminded of something she’d told me months before—that she’d
meant
to be happy. I’d heard pure determination in her words, and here lay her quarry, as if she had chased and hunted it down. She’d gone full tilt in the derby of her life and won the grand prize.

When the dinner hour arrived, the houseboys donned white jackets and gloves and served seven courses for us, while Karen directed everything smoothly from the end of the table with a small silver bell. When I’d been here alone she’d worn simple white skirts and shirtwaists, but now she was in rich plum-coloured silk. A rhinestone band swept back her dark curls. Her face was heavily powdered and her eyes deeply shadowed. She made a stunning picture, but of course it wasn’t me she meant to impress.

I’d brought one of the two dresses I owned for town, but it probably wasn’t fine enough and I worried that it set me apart. That wasn’t the only gap to bridge, either. Everyone seemed to know the same jokes and songs. Denys and Berkeley were Eton men, and there was a tune they sang over and over as the night went on, some sort of boating tribute that called for
rowing together, steady from stroke to bow,
with Denys singing loudest in a beautiful ringing tenor. Laughter and wine flowed freely, and I couldn’t help feeling slightly outside of it all. I was the youngest guest by far and the most provincial. Karen had taken to referring to me as “the child,” as in, to Ginger: “Isn’t Beryl the loveliest child you ever saw?”

Ginger was seated to my left at dinner. All I really knew about her was what Cockie had told me, that she was Ben’s paramour. She nudged ash from her cigarette into a cut-glass tray and said to me, “You walk like a cat. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“No. Is that a compliment?”

“But of course it is.” She shook her head at me so that her red curls trembled. “You’re not a bit like the other women round here, are you?” Her blue eyes were enormous and acute. Though I felt myself wriggling a little under her scrutiny, I also didn’t want to back down.

“Is there really only one sort of woman?”

“It’s catty of me to say, but sometimes there seems to be. I’ve just returned from Paris where absolutely everyone was wearing the same Lanvin gown and pearls. That stopped being fresh in about two minutes flat.”

“I’ve never travelled,” I told her.

“Oh, you absolutely should,” she insisted, “if only so that you can come home and really see it for what it is. That’s my favourite part.”

After the table had been cleared, almost everyone gathered around the stone hearth on chairs or benches or great stuffed cushions. Karen draped herself in one corner like a piece of art, with a long ebony cigarette holder in one hand and a red glass goblet in the other. Denys sat close to her, and when I came nearer I could hear them discussing Voltaire. One rushed to fill the end of the other’s sentence. They looked like the same person halved or twinned, as if they’d always been sitting just like this, leaning close, their eyes alive.

The next morning I rose at dawn to go shooting with the men. I bagged more ducks than anyone but Denys and got several claps on the back for it.

“If I’m not careful, you’ll outshoot me,” Denys said, shouldering his Rigby.

“Would that be terrible?”

“It would be marvellous, actually.” He squinted into the sun. “I’ve always liked a woman who could aim well and ride better…the type who stands on her own two feet and keeps everyone on their toes. Other men can have the demure shrinking ones.”

“Was your mother like that? Is that where you get your appreciation?”

“She was a strong woman, yes. And she might have made a great adventurer if she hadn’t had so much to do.”

“You’re not keen on family life.” It was a statement. He was becoming clearer and clearer to me.

“It’s awfully small, isn’t it?”

“Africa is the cure, then, the opposite of being boxed in. Has it ever failed you? I mean, can you imagine this place starting to pinch on you, too?”

“Never.” He said it plainly, without a second thought. “It’s always new. It always seems to be reinventing itself, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” I agreed. It was exactly what I’d wished I’d said to Ginger the night before, what I thought without quite being able to put my finger on it. Kenya was forever shedding its skin and showing itself to you all over again. You didn’t need to sail away for that. You only needed to turn around.

When Denys strode off on those endless legs, I matched his pace in my muck-covered boots with a strong sensation that he and I were quite alike in several ways. I couldn’t compete with Karen on the side of refinement and intellect. I would never be able to…but neither did she have what I had.

When we returned to Mbogani, two fine autos were in the yard, and two new sets of guests had arrived to join the party—Mr. and Mrs. Carsdale-Luck, the wealthy pair who ran the top-notch horse farm called Inglewood up north in Molo, and John Carberry and his beautiful wife, Maia, who owned a coffee estate up north near Nyeri, on the far side of the Aberdares.

Carberry was an Irish-born aristocrat, apparently, but I would never have guessed. He was rugged-looking and lanky and fair, with a broad American accent he’d taken up, I was told, when he denounced Ireland and his heritage.

Karen introduced him to me as “Lord Carberry,” but he pumped my hand cheerfully and corrected her, nearly drawling, “JC.” Maia was fresh and lovely in summer-weight silk and lace stockings, with shoes that had her teetering above the dowdy, frumpish Mrs. Carsdale-Luck, who kept fanning herself and complaining of the heat.

“JC and I are off to America next week,” Maia was explaining to Karen and Mrs. Carsdale-Luck. “We’re going to finish my flight training there.”

“How many hours have you logged?” Denys asked keenly.

“Just ten, but JC says I’ve taken to it like a duck to water.”

“I’m dying to get up there myself,” Denys said. “I was certified in the war, but then haven’t had a chance to get back to it. Or a damned plane, for that matter.”

“Come up in ours,” JC said. “I’ll wire you when we’re back.”

“Wouldn’t you need a lot of training?” Karen asked warily.

“It’s like riding a bicycle,” JC said airily, and the two men strode off to examine a new rifle.

The aeroplane was utterly new for me. On the few occasions when I’d seen one high above, stitching a pale-blue sky with puffs of smoke, it seemed silly and wrong to me, a child’s toy. But Denys was clearly drawn to flight, and so was Maia.

“You’re not terrified you’ll drop right out of the sky?” Mrs. Carsdale-Luck asked her incredulously, her hand still flapping around her damp face and neck.

“We all have to go some way.” Maia smiled and a dimple appeared in her rosy cheek. “At least I’d make a proper splash.”