My father meant the world to me. When I was away, I had longed for him every bit as much as I had for the farm, but the war had worked its changes on him, too. When he met my train, his face was so drawn and serious I barely knew how to say hello. We motored up the long hill, and he explained that nearby Nakuru was now a garrison town. The racecourse had become a remounting and transport depot for the troops. Our horses had been conscripted into service, leaving our stables and paddocks more than half empty, but it didn’t matter since all the race meetings were suspended for the duration.
As soon as we reached the crest, I could see the difference for myself. Hundreds of our workers had gone off with only the clothes on their backs and any weapons they had—guns or spears or bush knives—and some confused idea of glory or honour. The empire had called, and so now they were soldiers of the Crown. It was possible they would be back soon, but for the moment, it was as if someone had turned Green Hills over like a box and shaken its contents out onto the hard ground where they’d blown away.
In the main house, Mrs. O had made a meal for my homecoming and dressed for it. She was as tidy and pressed as ever, but there were strands of silver along her temples, and fine lines around her eyes, and I found I was seeing her in a new way. My bunkmate for most of the time I was at school was a girl named Doris Waterman—though she liked to be called Dos. Night after night, she’d lean down from her bunk over mine to whisper things, her straight brown hair falling around her face in a curtain. She told me she was an only child and that her father owned a string of shops in town. He also owned the New Stanley Hotel, which was an important gathering place for anyone coming through Nairobi. Anything that happened there, or anywhere nearby, Dos seemed to know.
“Mrs. Orchardson?” she’d said quizzically when I mentioned her in passing. “Is her husband still in Lumbwa?”
“What? She’s not married. She’s been living with my father for years.”
Dos made a clucking sound at my innocence and then proceeded to tell me how, years before, Mr. Orchardson, who was an anthropologist, had taken a Nandi woman for a lover and that she had become pregnant.
I was shocked. “How do you know that?”
She shrugged, still half-tipped over the bunk. “Everyone knows. It’s not something that happens every day.”
“So Mrs. O came to us? To escape her situation there?”
“Njoro wouldn’t be far enough from Lumbwa for me. It’s so humiliating. And now she and your father aren’t even married.”
It was as if there’d been clouds over my eyes, puffy and purely white. I hadn’t known anything about the world of adults or the number of thorny things that could happen between men and women. I hadn’t been paying attention, but now the clouds fell away in an instant, leaving the hard facts. My father must have known about Mr. Orchardson and the Nandi woman and either not cared or not given in to worrying about what the connection meant for him. Their current living arrangement was more scandalous than I ever imagined, for she was still married. Perhaps my father was, too. I’d never given the matter much attention, but I did now, feeling that their relationship was another thing that had grown infinitely more complicated in a very complicated world.
“When will the war end?” I asked my father. “At school everyone kept saying how the fighting is just preventative.” Bright sunlight glinted through the glazed windowpanes on the simple tea service and the oilcloth and hearthstones and cedar panels. Each object was the same as it had been—but the air all around felt different. I was different.
“They do say that, don’t they? And yet the casualties keep mounting. Twenty thousand in Africa alone.”
“Will you go off to fight?” I had a hard time keeping my voice steady asking it.
“No—I promise I won’t. But D has joined up.”
“When? Why? Surely there are enough men already.”
My father and Mrs. O exchanged a meaningful look.
“Daddy? What’s happened? Has D been wounded?”
“It’s Florence,” Mrs. O said. “She fell very ill not long after your last visit. Her heart gave out.”
“There was nothing wrong with her heart! She was always as fit as a horse.”
“No,” my father said slowly, with great care. “She’d actually been ill for years. No one knew but D.”
“I don’t understand. Where is she now?”
My father looked at the backs of his hands. The colour had drained from his face. “She died, Beryl. Six months ago. She’s gone.”
Six months? “Why did you keep it from me?”
“We didn’t want to tell you in a telegram,” my father said. “But I don’t know. Maybe we were wrong to wait.”
“She was a wonderful woman,” Mrs. O said. “I know you loved her very much.”