Circling the Sun (32 page)

F
or the next several months, I tried to think only about our horses—particularly Messenger Boy, who seemed to be resisting me a little less each day. No one would have called him tame, but some mornings when I rode him I felt something in the rounded smoothness of his back that felt very nearly like forbearance. He might not have liked me yet or even accepted me, but I was beginning to think he understood what I wanted from him, and that he might soon begin to want those things for himself.

One morning I had just handed Messenger Boy to his groom for cooling down when I met Emma in a sun hat as wide as a parasol. “Are you feeling well?” she asked, a strange look on her face. So like Emma. She hadn’t even said good morning.

“Of course,” I told her, but that night, when Mansfield was away in town on errands, I felt a rocking wave of nausea and barely made it out of bed before I vomited. When Mansfield came home, he found me bent in two on the floor, too weak to stand.

“Should we go and see the doctor in town?” he fretted.

“No. It’s just a touch of something I ate. I only need to lie down.”

He got me back to bed, draped cool cloths over my forehead, and pulled the curtains closed so I could rest. But after he planted a sweet kiss in my palm and backed out of the room, I stared at the wall for a long time, thinking. I was pregnant, of course. The feeling was the same as it had been before, in London. Somehow Emma had suspected before I had come to the truth myself.

I knew I needed to tell Mansfield, but after the business with Messenger Boy and the way he’d reacted to Maia Carberry’s death, I was terrified to bring it up. The pregnancy would only intensify his concerns about me. That was clear. What if he wanted not just to swaddle me but to curb me? What then?

While I was still stuck in a cycle of worry and doubt, Mansfield finally guessed. “Aren’t you happy, darling?” He clasped my hands and gazed into my eyes.

“We’re just getting started here,” I tried to explain. “There’s so much to do to make a farm run smoothly and get the horses in line.”

“How terrible would it really be to take a little time off? When you’re ready to get back to it, the horses will be here.”

We were lying in our bed in the dark. His white pyjama shirt seemed to float and jump in front of my eyes. “I don’t want to stop working, Mansfield. Please don’t ask me to.”

“Surely you’ll stop riding…at least until the baby is born. You have to take care of yourself.”

“This
is
how I take care of myself, don’t you see? If we have this baby, I’ll need to do my work just as before. I don’t know any other way to live.”

“
If
we have this baby?” He pulled back and his eyes hardened. “Surely there’s no question.”

I backpedalled. “I’m only afraid of how things will change.”

“They
will,
of course. We’re talking about a child, Beryl. Some dear small boy or girl who will look to us for everything.”

His voice had taken on an intensity that sent me spinning. He didn’t seem to understand that the very idea of throwing off the life I knew best for any other terrified me. There were women who never thought twice about giving themselves over to domestic life, the needs of their husbands and children. Some actually craved that role, but I’d never seen more than a hint of this sort of home life. Could I even do it?

“You’ll learn to be a good mother,” he said after I’d been silent for a long time. “People can learn all sorts of things.”

“I hope you’re right.” I closed my eyes and lay my hand on his chest, feeling along the slick buttons of his shirt and the perfect piped edge of the cotton, the hem made so carefully and so well it wouldn’t, couldn’t, ever unravel.

T
he whole world would read about the royal visit—how the train station in Nairobi was festooned with roses and painted welcome banners. Hundreds of flapping flags. Thousands of people from every possible race in peacock-hued ceremonial robes and headdresses, fezzes and toques and velvet slippers. Our new governor, Sir Edward Grigg, bellowed his speech into a megaphone before the two young princes were whisked away to Government House on the hill, for the first of many grand fêtes and supper parties and sweeping, exclusive balls.

For a month, every white woman within a hundred miles had been practising her curtsy and wringing her hands over what to wear. It was a lottery of entitlement—all the honourables and baronets, and first or third earls of where-have-you rolled out in their finest form. I was four months pregnant and too distracted to be concerned about any of it—and I also wasn’t nearly ready to share my news with others. To buy time, I’d begun to wear loose blouses and forgiving skirts—me, who was never out of slacks. I saw it as my only solution, along with hiding out as much as possible, but Mansfield was insisting we be present for everything. “Let’s just tell people, darling. They’ll all know soon enough anyway.”

“I know…but it just seems so personal.”

“What?” His forehead wrinkled. “It’s happy news, silly.”

“Can’t you go to the parties alone? I don’t feel like myself.”

“You can’t honestly think of begging off. It’s an
honour
to be invited, Beryl.”

“You’re sounding like Karen.”

“Am I?” He gave me a strange look. “I suppose that must mean you sound like Finch Hatton.”

“What?” I met his eyes. “What are you suggesting?”

“Nothing,” he said coolly, and strode away.

In the end, I went along to keep the peace. For the first elaborate dinner, Prince Henry was seated to my left. Down the far end sat Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David, dashing heir to the monarchy. Informally he was called David, and his brother Henry, Duke of Gloucester, was Harry, and both were keen to be shown a good time.

“I saw you riding to hounds in Leicestershire last year,” Harry said to me over bowls of chilled lemon soup. He meant during our stay in Swiftsden with Mansfield’s mother—though there hadn’t been a formal introduction. He was taller and darker than his brother David, and only slightly less handsome. “You look marvellous on a horse, particularly in slacks. I think all women should wear slacks.”

“Coco Chanel might be interested to hear you say it,” the very done-up Lady Grigg chimed in from Harry’s elbow, trying to insert herself. Harry ignored her.

“You nearly caused a riot that day at Melton,” he said. “That was my favourite part.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Yes, it seems high Leicestershire had never seen a woman astride a horse instead of side saddle.”

“So refreshing to see the old birds get a shock. But they stopped talking as soon as they saw you take the fences so boldly. A beautiful woman with a good seat is her own argument.”

I thanked him, laughing, while Lady Grigg craned our way again. She was the dignified wife of our governor, and yet there, with Prince Harry, she was transfixed by every word we were saying. I had the feeling she thought he was flirting with me. It was possible he was.

“Maybe you could break away before the safari and see our horses up in Elburgon,” I suggested. “We have the best bloodstock around.”

“Sounds wonderful.” He smiled easily beneath his clipped dark brown moustache. He had grey eyes, and they looked at me clearly. “If it were up to me we wouldn’t hunt at all. David’s the one who wants to bag a lion. I’d rather ride to the top of the highest hill I can find and see everything, in every direction.”

“Then do it,” I said. “Who’d stop
you
?”

“You’d think that, wouldn’t you? But I don’t run the show here. I’m not much more than window dressing, really.”

“You’re a prince.”

“I’m down the line.” He smiled. “It’s fine by me, really. Poor David’s got his head in the noose.”

“Well, even if you don’t care for hunting, you’ve found the right fellow to take you out.”

“Finch Hatton. Yes. He seems a splendid fellow.”

“He’s the very best there is.” I glanced down to where Denys sat near Prince David, both of them flanked by admirers. Karen hadn’t been invited, as she’d suspected. There would be hell to pay for Denys when he finally returned to Mbogani, though who knew when that would be. He’d been so preoccupied by safari preparations that I hadn’t seen him, even briefly, in months.

In some respects, Denys and I were both in a period of suspension. There was no way this safari wouldn’t change his life. The time and privacy he craved would be swallowed up by his new notoriety, and I knew some part of him dreaded it: the purest part, which only wanted to live simply, by his own code. How I understood that. Within a very short time, my belly would grow unmistakably round and my breasts tighten and swell. My body would transform first, and then everything else would follow. I still cared for Mansfield, but I also felt as if I’d boarded a train meant for one place that was now irrevocably going somewhere else entirely. The whole situation made me feel desperate.

With a stirring of passionate violins, the string quartet began to play Schubert. “Tell me, do you dance, Harry?” I asked him.

“Like a fool.”

“Wonderful,” I said. “Save one for me.”

The next week, David and Harry came up to Melela as I’d suggested and raced on our exercise track. It wasn’t much as races went. David was compact and athletic looking, but he wasn’t a very able rider. He sat Cambrian and Harry sat Clemency, and for five furlongs the brothers were neck and neck while an entire entourage cheered them on. Cambrian was the much better racer; he was undefeated, in fact, until that day.

“You’re nice not to say how bloody awful I am,” David said as we walked back to the paddock, his blue eyes full of charisma. All along the fence, eligible women strained in a pose, ready to kill or drop their knickers for a whiff of his attention.

“You were lovely.” I laughed. “Well, the stallion was, in any case.”

“Who’s this fellow?” he asked when we came near Messenger Boy. “Now there’s a fine animal.”

“He’s had a bit of a chequered history, but he’s starting to come round. Would you like to see him run?”

“I’ll say.”

I had one of the grooms ready Messenger Boy for me—thinking not just that he would make a magnificent impression on the prince, but also that it was a fitting opportunity to show Mansfield that I meant to keep handling our animals as before. It was probably obstinate of me, but I imagined I could easily explain how David had insisted on seeing Messenger Boy to his fullest advantage.

When that day was over, though, and the last vestiges of the entourage had trickled away, Mansfield let me know how unhappy I’d made him. “You’re deliberately trying to put this child at risk, Beryl, and embarrassing me besides. They’re famous playboys, both of them, and no one could have missed your flirtation.”

“Don’t be silly. I was only being friendly, and everyone knows I’m married.”

“Marriage hasn’t exactly kept you out of trouble before.”

I felt slapped. “If you’re angry about the horse, say that. Don’t try to rub my nose in the past.”

“You
are
being wilful about the riding, no doubt—but you also seem to have no idea of how you’re prompting gossip.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“My mother reads every
word
of the society columns, Beryl. I would die if even a whisper of scandal made its way home. You know how difficult she is.”

“Then why bow and scrape to mollify her?”

“Why deliberately fuel gossip and speculation?” He bit down hard on his lower lip, as he often did when he was angry. “I think we should go back to England until the baby is born,” he went on. “It’s a much safer place to be for many reasons.”

“Why travel so far?” I bristled. “What would I do there?”

“Take care of yourself, for a start. Be my wife.”

“Are you doubting that I love you on top of everything else?”

“You do care, I think…as much as you can. But sometimes I wonder if you’re still waiting for Finch Hatton.”

“Denys? Why are you saying all of this now?”

“I don’t know. It almost seems as if we’ve been playing a kind of game lately.” He looked at me closely. “Have we, Beryl?”

“Of course not,” I said firmly. But later, as I tried to sleep, I felt a surge of guilt and awareness. I wasn’t trying to toy with Mansfield exactly, but I
had
been flirting with the princes. In a way, I couldn’t help myself. It felt marvellous to smile and make Harry smile, too, or to walk off in a particular way and know that David’s eyes were on me. It was childish, and also futile, but for those moments, I could believe I was free-spirited and alluring again, as if I still had some measure of control in the world.

How had Mansfield and I come to a standoff so quickly? I wondered. We’d started off well, committed to being staunch allies and friends. It hadn’t been perfect, but now this pregnancy was pressing us into separate corners. I had absolutely no desire to go to England to placate him, but what was the alternative? If things fell apart between us now, I’d be alone with a child to care for. I could also possibly lose the farm…and that seemed out of the question. Like it or not, I would have to bend.