“You’re not afraid?” Mansfield asked, reaching for my hand.
“I am. But we can’t leave him here to be chained up like a dog.” For some reason, Messenger Boy made me think of Paddy, of the difficult line between wild, natural things and the civilized world. “He’s still got something good in him. Anyone can see that.”
Mansfield’s hand clenched mine. I knew he was rattled by what we’d learned. “Will he win derbies?”
“If Ruta were here, he would say His legs are powerful as a leopard’s or His heart is like a wildebeest’s,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.
“All right then, how much for leopard legs?” Mansfield said to Darling, drawing out his chequebook.
Denys and Mansfield had never met. When we drove out to Mbogani on a bright, dry afternoon, just after we’d returned from England, I was a little out of breath thinking about how they might size each other up. We’d brought back the new buttercup-yellow Rolls-Royce. My dress was from Worth, my rope of pearls from Asprey. Perversely, I wanted both Denys and Karen to see all of it—and me—to full advantage. I wasn’t a waif any longer, or a child. But when we arrived only Karen’s majordomo, Farah, was on hand.
“They are out walking, msabu,” he said cordially. “Up to Lamwia, to the site of their graves.”
“They’re still very much alive,” I said to Mansfield, when he gave me a curious look. “They’re just overly romantic that way.”
“That’s fine,” he said. “I love romance.” He opened the rear door, and the three dogs we’d been travelling with rolled out onto the lawn, a borzoi, a pretty red setter, and a young blue deerhound that we’d brought back as a gift for Karen. The dogs leaped and yelped, happy to be free, while I couldn’t stop looking up into the hills, wondering if Karen and Denys could see us, and when they’d come.
—
“You look well, Beryl,” Denys said later on the veranda. My dress had been crushed from sitting by then, and I was feeling tired and a little nervous at seeing him. He kissed me quickly. “Congratulations.”
Mansfield was a full head shorter, but so had Berkeley been. I found myself hoping that Denys saw what I did in Mansfield, and also what Mansfield saw in me.
“We went to the National Gallery,” I said, feeling myself flush crimson, “and the Bolshoi Ballet in Rome.” I was bursting to tell him all we’d done and how I was changed.
“How marvellous,” he said several times, evenly, as I talked and talked. “Good for you both,” but there was no real feeling behind his words. He seemed politely indifferent to everything.
Karen was clearly taken with her new hound, which had rich grey eyes and a ruff of wiry whiskers around her long nose. “She’s delicious. You were a dear to think of me, especially since I’ve been lonely without Minerva.” Apparently, just the month before, the pretty house owl had flown into the wooden blinds and got tangled in the cords and strangled to death. “We shouldn’t care so much about animals,” she said. “It’s dangerous.”
“I can tell you the animals aren’t overconcerned about us,” Denys said, settling back into his chair.
“Of course they are,” she countered, reaching for the hound’s damp soft muzzle. “Minerva was awfully fond of me, and so are my dogs.”
“We ring the dinner gong and they run to us. That’s common sense, not love. Not loyalty, either.”
“He’s in one of his black moods,” she explained to us, as if he weren’t there.
“Where are you off to next?” I asked Denys, dying to change the subject.
“To Rejaf. I’m taking some clients down the Nile.”
“How exotic,” Mansfield said, drawing on his cigar. “It sounds like a Hollywood film.”
“The mosquitoes would tell you otherwise.”
“I’ve always wanted to see the Nile,” I said.
“It’s hardly a moving target,” he said, and then got up to see about something inside the house.
Karen raised her eyebrows at me. Black mood, her look said, but I felt slapped. I’d played out this encounter dozens of times on the ship back to Kenya, wondering how it would feel to see Denys again now that my situation had changed. I was married, and altered in other ways, too. I very much meant to be happy and wanted him to realize that—but he was behaving so oddly and being cold to everyone. Nothing was going as planned.
“You’re going to buy land then?” Karen asked us. Her voice sounded strained.
“Yes, perhaps up near Elburgon.”
“So far up-country?”
“The price is right, and there’s a beautiful garden. Mansfield loves a good garden.”