“You’re lovely, but stop scratching, will you? Everyone will think you’ve got fleas.”
Dos was still a student—currently at Miss Seccombe’s in town—and we had almost nothing in common. She was curvy, brown, and tiny in her blue lace frock, good at conversation and the usual pleasantries, easy in the company of others. I was rail thin, a head taller than Dos, even in flat shoes—and far more comfortable talking to horses and dogs than people. We were as mismatched as two sixteen-year-old girls could be, but I was still fond of Dos and glad she was here.
At 10:00 p.m. sharp, according to a silly British custom, I gripped my father’s arm on the stairs. I only ever saw him in dusty khakis and sun helmet, but his dark tails and white shirtfront looked natural on him, reminding me of the life he’d led before, in England. There, I would have been formally presented to the king at court, in a procession of other well-born young women in pearls and gloves and ostrich feathers, curtsying my heart out. In this far-flung colony, where sovereignty was a flag and a notion and sometimes a few rousing verses of “God Save the King” that had everyone in tears, I was brought out to a hotel ballroom full of ranchers, former soldiers, and Afrikaners, all soaped clean and half-pickled. A five-piece band played the lilting opening to “If You Were the Only Girl in the World,” the cue for my father and me to take our turn on the dance floor.
“I’m going to step on your toes now,” I warned.
“Go on, then. I won’t make faces and give you away.”
He danced beautifully, and I did my best to keep up, concentrating on his grey wool tailcoat, which smelled faintly of the cedar chest it had been pulled from the day before. I had to hunch a bit to keep from towering over him, and this made me feel more awkward than I already did.
“You know, they don’t hand out manuals for the tough stuff,” he said as the band slowed. “I haven’t always known what to do as a father, but somehow you’ve turned out all right.”
Before I could really take in what he’d said, or make the moment last, he stepped away in one move, passing my right hand to Lord Delamere.
“Look at you, Beryl. Pretty as a filly,” D said.
He had come out of the war looking older by a dozen years. There were deep lines around his eyes, and his hair had gone white in a bad bout of fever, but he’d come through. I rarely saw him now. He still owned Equator Ranch but had moved on to another ranching operation south and east of us, on the chalky shores of Lake Elmenteita.
“Florence should be here,” he said against my shoulder. “She would have been so proud.”
I felt a sharp plunging sensation from the tender way D had said her name and told him I still thought about her every day. “It’s not fair she’s gone.”
“Not a bit.” And then he kissed my cheek before smoothly passing me on to the next in line.
It took me several dances to clear the dip in my mood, but the fellows partnering me didn’t seem to notice or mind. For an hour or more I was spun in a press of warm shaved faces, strong hands and damp ones, good dancers and ones with clumsy sidesteps. I tasted champagne on the back of my tongue as a lone trumpet swooned the verses I knew but didn’t sing:
A Garden of Eden just made for two
With nothing to mar our joy
I would say such wonderful things to you
There would be such wonderful things to do
If you were the only girl in the world
And then there was Jock—Purves, as my father called him—looking a good deal cleaner than he had done twisting fence wire and more handsome now that we were nose to nose. When he spun me close, I smelled shaving powder and gin, and though I didn’t have the slightest bit of experience with men or swooning, I could tell by Dos’s look, as we came past her table again, that it was high time I learned.
There were lots of men like Jock in town—discharged soldiers who’d taken their Settlement Allotment and snatched up acreage, trying to reinvent themselves in a purposeful way—but few were as handsome. He was strong-looking and squared off everywhere, shoulders and jaw and chin. This was what a man was supposed to be, I thought, if you could build him from scratch and break him in like new land.
“Is your fence still standing?” I asked him.
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Any number of things.” I laughed. “Starting with marauding elephants.”
“You think I’m funny.”
“No…” I let my voice trail off.
“A certain kind of man comes to Africa and builds fences. Is that what you think?”
“How should I know?” I threw out. “I’m only sixteen.”
“You were never sixteen.”