He turned slightly, leaned his hip against the railing, and looked through the set of casement windows into a room that Elaine repeatedly referred to as the drawing room, another British export that seemed anachronistic in a country where nearly everyone lived in huts. Just at this party alone, he could count three affairs he knew about, and who could say how many others lay beneath this modest number? Roland, himself, was sleeping with Elaine’s best friend, Jane, and the odd thing was, Regina had said, Elaine knew about it and didn’t care. Which raised the question: with whom was Elaine sleeping? Regal Elaine, who would not have gone without. Lanky Elaine, with her hard, nut-brown face and her hair bleached nearly platinum by a lifetime on the equator. Imperious Elaine, who had been born in Kenya and had once told Thomas huffily that she was a Kenyan citizen (though it didn’t seem to have made her like Africans any better, he had noticed). She kept horses and had the thighs of a rider. She had a unique sort of beauty, but her personality was as weather-beaten as her face. Worse than Roland at hiding her contempt for Americans. She glanced up at that moment and saw that Thomas was staring at her. He quickly slid his eyes away. She might misinterpret the examination, might even flirt with him later.
Jesus, he thought, turning back to the railing. That was all he needed.
He’d had the migraine for hours and had been glad for the darkened room. Regina had been puttering in the kitchen and then had been reading on the verandah. In the privacy of the bedroom, he’d felt the joy even then, even through the nauseating haze of the pain. And when the unbearable had subsided, he’d been nearly euphoric with happiness. He’d played the conversation he’d had with Linda in the market over and over, the repetition of the phrases like a poem he was trying to memorize.
Is it really you?
This is very strange.
Have you changed?
That was years ago. Everything is different now.
He heard the soft click of the door to the verandah behind him. He sent up a quick prayer that it wasn’t Elaine.
—
Our resident rhyming fool.
Roland, generous golden drink in hand, sidled up to Thomas and leaned his elbows on the wrought-iron railing, a position that looked, but couldn’t be, at ease. His arms were swathed in some synthetic shirt material Roland let you know had specially been sent from London.
—
I don’t rhyme,
Thomas said.
—
Really not? I didn’t realize.
Roland took a sip of his drink and brushed a greasy forelock from his forehead. His smell was rank with an overlay of cologne. Not to mention his lethal breath, evident at a yard. The British didn’t bathe but once or twice a week; well, no one did out here.
—
Where can one get your books, anyway?
—
There aren’t any books.
Thomas was certain they’d already had this conversation, months ago.
—
Oh. How disappointing.
Roland’s trousers, also of some synthetic material, were tight against his thighs and belled over his shoes. He wore a heavy silver watch with an expansion band too big for him.
—
Broadsides? Pamphlets?
Roland asked, with seeming insouciance.
—
Literary magazines,
Thomas said, immediately regretting the note of pride.
—
I suppose there’s a market for that sort of thing in the States?
Thomas wondered where Roland’s lover was tonight. Jane, whose husband led safaris and was often conveniently away from home. Whose husband complained loudly at parties about not being allowed to shoot the game anymore.
—
None.
—
Oh, dear,
Roland said with faint dismay.
Regina must do well?
He meant financially.
Thomas thought about, and then decided against, revealing that he was putting Regina through school.
—
There’s a Ugandan fellow here runs a magazine might be of use to you,
Roland said, making a sour face and leaning conspiratorially toward Thomas.
Of course, it’s a grotty little magazine, mind you, and the fellow is a bit of a slime, but, still, I suppose any publication is better than none?
Roland put his back to the railing and surveyed his own party.
—
And what were we being so reclusive about all alone on the verandah, if one may ask?
Roland asked, giving himself permission. He smiled and took a sip of his drink. The man’s condescension was insufferable. The
we
put Thomas over the edge.
—
Actually, I was thinking about Jane,
Thomas said.
Arab furniture from the coast mixed with English antiques to produce a fussiness that needed editing; though there was a magnificent secretary Thomas had admired once before and did again tonight. He examined the books that lay behind the leaded glass cabinets. Nothing surprising, just the usual: Dickens and Hardy, T. E. Lawrence and Richard Burton. He might ask Roland tonight if he could borrow the Burton. An African in a white uniform took his glass and asked, in melodic Kikuyu accent, if he’d like another Pimm’s. Thomas shook his head, the medication for the migraine mixing with the alcohol, making him both high and groggy. Desperate for sleep.
In the corner, Regina was talking to a boy. She had worn her hair in a twist, a style she knew Thomas liked. Her sleeveless red dress revealed arms tanned from long afternoons spent at outdoor clinics. Her neck was damp from the heat, tiny dots of moisture on her skin. Once he had craved to make love to his wife. When they’d met in a hardware store in Boston
—
she wearing a yellow T-shirt and overalls, looking for a hoe; he standing at the checkout line with a plunger in his hand
—
he’d noticed her porcelain-fine skin and her astonishing breasts outlined beneath the bib of the overall and had felt compelled to capture her attention. He’d followed her to her car, feigning an interest in gardening that hadn’t survived the evening. In bed that night at her apartment (
wallowing
in bed, he thought now), he’d confessed he’d known nothing about gardening, and she’d laughed and told him he’d been as transparent as glass. She’d been flattered, however, she added, which he hadn’t understood until months later when he’d learned how much she hated her large body. And by then, it was too late. He thought the words,
too late.
A fatal construction he’d never really put together until now. Already the chance meeting with Linda was rearranging his thinking.
Regina bent to the boy, hair whipped blond by constant wind and sun, who had come out to say hello to the guests. Looking shy and miserable, though Regina was good at coaxing a smile and might manage one soon. He seemed a sweet kid, only ten years old. In another year, Roland would send him to England to boarding school. It struck Thomas as an extreme measure to take to give a child an education, Roland’s culture sometimes as foreign to him as the African. Regina beckoned to Thomas to join them.
—
You remember Richard,
Regina said in a bright voice used by adults in the presence of children.
Thomas put out his hand, and the boy shook it, the delicate bones nearly lost in Thomas’s grip.
—
How do you do?
the boy asked politely, eyes everywhere but on Thomas.
—
Very well. And yourself?
Thomas bent slightly to the boy, who shrugged. Manners could take him only so far.
—
Richard said he’s racing tomorrow in Karen. He’s invited us to come and watch.
Thomas could scarcely imagine the boy controlling a horse, never mind racing. Though, as Elaine’s son, he’d have grown up with horses. Once, Thomas and Regina had been invited to the Karen Hunt, an anachronism if ever Thomas had seen one: sherry on silver trays, scarlet coats, the immense underbellies of the beasts brushing the tops of the hedges. The hedges of Karen, he thought. They told a story all their own.
—
I think we might just have to do that,
Thomas said to the boy, thinking, again, even as he spoke: And where is Linda now? Right this very minute?
—
You’re kind of quiet tonight.
This from Regina when the boy had left, summoned by his mother.
—
Am I?
—
You’re being almost rude.
—
To whom?
—
To Roland and Elaine, to start.
—
Considering the fact that Roland just expressed deep sympathy over the fact that I’m a failed poet who needs to be supported by his wife, I don’t suppose I give a fuck.
—
Thomas.
Beyond Regina, Elaine watched them intently.
—
It’s the migraine,
he said, searching for an explanation his wife might find acceptable.
It’s made the day seem not normal.
Regina slipped a finger between the buttons of his shirt.
All your days are abnormal.
Thomas understood the finger for what it was. Regina would want to make love when they got home.
—
I know you’ve had the migraine,
Regina said, whispering.
But tonight’s the night.
Thomas felt a sinking in his chest.
—
I’ve done the charts,
she said, perhaps defensively.
He hesitated just a second too long, then tried to put his arm around her. But distance or mild panic had already conveyed itself to Regina, who moved inches to one side of him. Too often, it seemed to Thomas, he unintentionally hurt his wife.
—
I assume you’ve heard the news.
Her voice cool now, the barometer lowered, looking away from him and taking a sip of her drink, a rosy wine.
—
What news?
Thomas, in cautious ignorance, asked.
—
They’ve arrested Ndegwa.
Thomas simply stared.
—
This afternoon. Around five o’clock. Norman what’s-his-name, the one from the London paper, just told me.
She gestured in Norman what’s-his-name’s direction. Noting Thomas’s surprise. It would not be fair to say that Regina was enjoying Thomas’s distress.
—
Impossible,
Thomas said. For the second time that day, daunted by the impossible.
I just saw the man at lunch. I had a drink with him at the Thorn Tree.
Regina, who had not known he’d had a drink at the Thorn Tree, looked sharply up at him.
They arrested him at the university,
she said.
There are demonstrations even now.
Thomas, saturated, couldn’t absorb the news.
—
He must have a tremendous following,
Regina said, now as watchful as Elaine.
—
Jesus,
Thomas said, shaken by possibility become reality. He thought of the casual way Ndegwa had looked at African women. Of his joke about the worm.
—
Big enough to be news in London anyway,
Regina said.
He waited in the bedroom of the villa, the room lit only by the moon, the bluish light outlining the odd feminine bits of furniture that had been lent to them after the robbery: the dressing table with its chintz skirt; the camelbacked settee that had some age; the heavy mahogany wardrobe with the door that didn’t quite fit and in which both he and Regina kept ridiculously few clothes. He imagined the ornate wardrobe traveling from London by ship to Mombasa, brought up by horse and cart from the coast. A woman’s treasure, a piece of furniture she’d said she wouldn’t go to Africa without. And what had happened to the woman? Thomas wondered. Had she died in childbirth? Been afraid during the long nights when her husband had been on safari? Danced at the Muthaiga Club while her husband made love to her best friend in the backseat of his Bentley? Been sick with chronic malaria in this very bed? Or had she become browned and hardened like Elaine, the boredom and dust sharpening her tongue? The house was a perk from Regina’s research grant, its unexpected luxury surprising them both when they’d arrived in the country. Regina had at first balked at staying in Karen, but the bougainvillea and the Dutch door in the kitchen had seduced her before they’d even had their gin and tonics on the verandah. Now his wife adored the house, couldn’t imagine returning to the States. Couldn’t imagine living without the servants now, for that matter: the cook, the gardener, and the ayah they would hire if only Regina could bear a child.
Behind the bathroom door, he could hear the swishing of limbs in the water of the clawfooted bathtub. He knew that Regina would soon put on the black silk-and-lace nightgown he’d bought her on a homesick whim during a stopover in Paris on their way to Africa. A nightgown she’d worn every night she thought herself fertile; a nightgown that now gave off a whiff of failure, its intended allure long since worn away, like a woman’s scent fading. He wished he could somehow signal to Regina not to wear the thing
—
had even, oddly, thought of hiding it
—
but she would almost certainly misinterpret the comment, would take it personally to mean that he thought her too fat. A word he’d never used, never even suggested, her own distaste for her body so pervasive she assumed everyone shared her own distorted image. It had, he knew now, ruined her life, in the way a cleft lip or a misshapen limb might twist a future. Nothing he could say or do could erase the picture she had of herself, and he thought the damage must have been done early in her life, though he thought it pointless to blame a parent.