Circling the Sun (24 page)

F
rank didn’t have much of an interest in farming and hired out crop work so that he could spend his time shooting or visiting friends. His hunting cabin was ten miles from the main house at Knightswick, in the Kedong Valley. He slept there most nights with his tracker, Bogo, returning to see me every few days. We’d have lunch or dinner, and then he’d lead me to the bedroom. After he watched me undress, he’d stretch me out on the bed. He loved to hear my breath catch, to see and feel my hips moving, my hands clutching the sheets. He seemed to enjoy giving me pleasure even more than he wanted release for himself, and I guessed it made him feel as if he were taking care of me. He was, in his way.

Frank never forced himself on me, but still I can’t say I was ever attracted to him. He walked in an awkward, rolling way, like a trained bear, with squat square hands and feet, and his belly was round and taut as a drum. At dinner, his talk was coarse and gruff, but he never failed to ask me how I was feeling and what I’d been doing and thinking about. He’d tell me stories of the hunting he’d done or the rides he’d taken. He never asked me to accompany him when he went away, and that was fine with me. It was more than enough to have his company intermittently. When we had sex, I saw it as a kind of physical transaction. We were giving something to each other, even if it wasn’t exactly affection. I squeezed my eyes shut, or trained them on the curled grey hairs on his chest, and tried not to think that he was as old as my father. He was kind. He cared about me. He wouldn’t give up on me.

In the bureau in Frank’s bedroom stood a pile of currency he had earmarked for me to buy horses, or whatever I liked. I often opened the drawer and looked at the stack of bills, feeling strangely removed from the world of commerce, where shillings made things happen. I’d been so broke for so long that I should have leapt at the chance, but I didn’t. I was grateful to Frank and trusted that he meant well, and I wanted to be deeply engaged in training again more than I could say. But I wasn’t ready for anything permanent with him, not yet. Something simply didn’t feel right—so I rode Pegasus on my own or walked in the grounds in a pair of printed silk pyjamas that Frank had bought for me in Nairobi. His friend Idina Hay wore hers everywhere, even to town, and he thought I should look just as glamorous and indolent.

When we went to visit Idina at Slains, her estate near Gilgil, he begged me to wear them, swearing I’d feel more at home like that, but I put on the white silk dress instead, the one that Karen had told me was my colour, and stockings and heels and the pearls we’d found in a shop in Belgravia not long after Frank came into my life. I suppose I wanted Idina and her friends to see me as respectable, though I don’t know why I cared.

We turned up at Slains on a hot afternoon in July. The estate sat like a rough-cut jewel on two thousand acres in the hills above Gilgil, right at the foot of the blue Aberdares. We bumped along narrower and narrower roads and finally came to the house, which was partly bricked and partly shingled, a puzzle of colour and texture that nonetheless managed to look inviting.

Idina and her husband Joss had built the house but rented the farm. He was her third husband, actually, and together the pair looked as though they might have stepped out of a magazine. They were fair-skinned and slim-hipped, and both wore their auburn hair cropped and slicked to one side. He looked feminine, or she looked masculine. Either way, they were radiant twins as they greeted our car, followed closely by several servants in fezzes and long white robes. The servants swept our bags away while the barefooted Idina and Joss led us over the weedy hummocks to a place where an elaborate picnic was laid out. Another couple sprawled out on the grass on a tartan blanket, both in straw hats and drinking whisky sours in frosty glasses. For most people, a picnic meant dry sandwiches and tepid water in canteens. Here there was an ice machine that ran on a generator. It whirred like a valet at the ready. A gramophone played rolling tendrils of jazz.

“Hello,” cooed the slim, pretty woman on the tartan. She sat up, cross-legged, and adjusted her hat. This was Honor Gordon and the gentleman, Charles, was her new husband—a pale, dark, smart-looking Scot who’d been cast off a few years before by Idina herself. They all seemed good friends now, thoroughly comfortable with one another and also with Frank, who drew out his brown velvet bag before he’d finished his first drink.

“Oh, Frank dear,” Idina said. “That’s why we invite you. You have the best toys.”

“And a keen taste in women,” Joss said, reaching for the bag.

“You are delicious-looking,” Idina agreed. “Though I can’t quite imagine how Frank got his hooks into you. Nothing personal, Frank.” She cut her eyes at him, smiling. “But you aren’t exactly Sir Galahad.”

“Frank’s been a good friend,” I said.

“What would we do without friends?” Idina lolled onto her back, letting her legs swing to one side. Her sarong-like shift slid up past her pale thighs.

“You’re lily white!” Honor exclaimed. “Why don’t you roast here like everyone else?”

“She’s a vampire.” Joss laughed. “She has no blood of her own at all, only borrowed blood, and whisky.”

“That’s right, my lion,” she purred. “It’s why I’ll be immortal.”

“As long as you don’t leave me alone,” Joss said, and bent over a line he’d made with the cocaine on a tray. He had a rolled paper cone and gave a tremendous snort.

We lay there in the spotted shade until the daylight lengthened and turned gold, and then went to dress for dinner. The bedroom assigned to Frank and me was plush with rugs and throws and elaborately scrolled and painted antique furniture. The bed was massive, and folded silk pyjamas nestled on the two rounded pillows, gifts from Idina.

“I told you about the pyjamas,” Frank said, stepping out of his corduroy trousers. His legs were thick and furred above the elastic of his socks. “They’re all right, aren’t they? You seem rattled.”

“It’s all just a little empty. Everything seems to be an entertainment for them—especially people. I don’t really understand that kind of sport.”

“Maybe if you drank more, you’d relax.”

“I don’t want to lose my head.”

“No chance of that.” He laughed. “You might have a better time, though.”

“I’m fine,” I insisted, wanting the matter dropped and the day over. I rolled down my stockings and manoeuvred out of my damp brassière just as the door opened without a knock. Joss stood there.

“Hello, darlings.” A friendly and expansive smile painted his face. “Do you have everything you need?”

I felt my spine tighten and resisted the urge to cover myself. That kind of modesty would be shockingly priggish here. “Yes, thank you.”

“Idina wants to see you before dinner, Beryl. She’s just down the hall, last door on the right.” He winked and went out again, and I gave Frank an exasperated look.

He shrugged and worked at the bone buttons on his pyjamas. I could tell he was drunk by the thick way he moved, and felt a flaring of old feelings, like a visiting ghost. Frank wasn’t at all like Jock, but I didn’t want to see him like this all the same. “You can’t really blame him,” he said.

“No? Maybe I’ll blame you instead then.”

“I see we’re feeling feisty.” He came round to where I stood and reached for me.

“Please, Frank.” I pulled away.

“It’s one dinner. We’ll leave tomorrow if you like.”

“Nobody works. I don’t know what on earth they do with their time.”

“If you have enough money you can play for ever, I suppose.”

“Work does more than pay your way.” My own intensity surprised me. “It gives you a reason to go on.”

“You
do
need a drink,” he said, turning to his mirror.

Idina’s bedroom was three times the size of ours, with a sprawling bed loaded down with silky furs. A great gilt mirror hung above it. I’d never seen such a thing.

“I’m in here,” Idina sang out from the bathroom. I found her there in an enormous jet-green onyx tub. She soaked in it up to her chin, the perfumed water leaking steam. “Those fit you perfectly.” She nodded at the pyjamas. “Do you like them?”

“They’re lovely, thank you.” I knew I sounded stiff from the way she eyed me and reached for her smooth black cigarette holder, lighting a match with damp fingers.

“You didn’t mind what I said earlier, about Frank?”

“It’s fine. I’m just tired.”

She drew in on the holder, and then blew out smoke in a cloud, never taking her eyes from me. “I wouldn’t want to be blonde,” she said, “but yours is lovely.”

“It’s horsehair.” I lifted up a strand and let it fall. “It won’t stay put no matter what I do.”

“Somehow the effect works.” She pulled on her cigarette again and then waved the smoke away. “Your eyes are good, too, like chips of blue glass.”

“Do I get to go through all of your features now?”

“I’m praising you, darling. You seem to like it when
men
look you over.”

“I don’t—unless it’s the right man.”

“Do tell,” she said with a laugh. “I’m
starved
for a little indiscretion.”

“Maybe you should get into town more.”

She laughed again, as if I weren’t being a perfect bitch, and then said, “Whom are you in love with?”

“No one.”

“Really? I thought it might be Finch Hatton.” She arched an eyebrow, waiting for my reaction. I would rather have died than give her one. “Don’t you think Karen is a little demanding for him? Poor Tania…how she sighs when he goes.”

“I didn’t know you two were even acquainted,” I said, feeling a need to defend Karen.

“But of course we are. I adore her. I just don’t think she’s the one to hold Denys. There’s nothing wild in her.”

“No one admires only wildness.” Somehow I couldn’t stand to hear Idina make Karen out to be so small. She was many things, but not that. “They have a great deal to talk about.”

“Do you think so? If you ask me, he’s too good at being a bachelor. Why choose one when you can have a dozen?”

“He probably
can
have dozens.” Heat tightened my throat. I hadn’t spoken of Denys in a long time, and never to a stranger. “But it doesn’t really cut both ways, does it?”

“Why not? Women can have plenty of lovers, too. Dozens upon dozens, as long as they’re clever and don’t crow about it.”

“But it never plays out that way. Someone always knows.”

“You’re not doing it right then,” she pronounced. With a swishing sound, she stood up. Slick water glazed her white-pink skin. Her perfect body was like art, or a carefully sculpted dish on a platter. She didn’t even reach for the towel but simply stood there and let me look at her, knowing I would feel awkward turning away.

I flushed, resenting her and the life she lived. If she was the model for discretion and polish, I wasn’t interested. “Maybe I don’t want to do it right,” I said.

Her eyes crinkled, but without any humour. “I don’t believe you, darling. Everyone always wants
more.
Why else are we here?”

Dinner was served at a long low table near the fire. It was always cool at night in the highlands, but this blaze was also meant to be ornamental. It set the room glowing and Idina’s cheeks, too, as she held court at the far end of the table. The wide hearth opened just behind her, glinting along the tips of her hair. Above her, a twisted set of buffalo horns stabbed out from a wooden plaque.

There was something about Idina that reminded me of a hunting kestrel or kite. It was her hard, bright eyes as well as her words—the expectation that everyone was just like she was, constantly hungry, with little concern for who might get hurt along the way, or how. I couldn’t understand why Frank would want to spend time with this crowd. They were bored, naughty children with highballs and morphine and sex for their toys. People were toys, too. Idina had invited me into her bathroom to bat at me like a mouse, curious about whether I would freeze or run. Now she began a game, which was another version of the same manoeuvre. It was a parlour game where everyone contributed a line to a story that moved in a circle. The point was confession.