One hundred guests were herded into the dining room, which was dressed as finely as the place could muster. The event had flushed out the up-country—the farmers who’d become soldiers, then farmers again. D was there, his hair long and wild under a ribboned helmet. A scabbard swung out from his belt, whacking at the air as he turned and tried to kiss me. He had given us a generous cheque and let me know, a little sentimentally, that if I ever needed him I had only to call out and he’d be there. His promise touched me and made me feel a little steadier as I carried myself from guest to guest, holding the yards of silk ninon in my hands so I could walk without tripping.
Under buttery gravy, there was the ubiquitous tommie steak with buttons of potatoes and pearled onions. My father was paying through the nose for the champagne, so I drank as much as I could, every time it came round. When I danced later, my feet were slightly numb and tingled as I backed across the parquet, led by D and every farmer who could scoot away from his wife. Finally I reached my father. He looked dashing that night, but also sad. There were long lines around his mouth, and his eyes seemed tired and far away.
“Are you happy?” he asked.
I nodded into his shoulder and squeezed him more tightly.
In the wee hours, Lavender chauffeured us again, this time to the Muthaiga Country Club, to a square room lit with a single crystal lamp. A broad bed swam with chenille.
Jock and I didn’t know each other. I felt that now, seeing the dense shape he made in the room and wondering, in a dizzy way, how it would be when we lay down. I was drunk and glad for that when Jock’s hands tugged at my buttons. His tongue flicked around the inside of my mouth, both sour from the wine. I tried to match him, to be good at it—to catch up with what was happening. His mouth was hot on my neck. His hands dropped to push here and there along my body. We fell to the bed, and there was an absurd moment when he tried to squeeze between my legs, my long narrow skirt resisting him, and me trying to help. I laughed and realized instantly that was the wrong thing.
What did I know about sex? Nothing except what I saw in our paddocks or had heard from Kibii about the games young Kip boys and girls played in the dark. I’d no idea what to do or how to arrange myself to be taken—but I did know that something meaningful had changed. Jock had been hard—I’d felt the stiff knot of his groin against my leg and hip—but that was gone now. Before I knew what was happening, he rolled off me and onto his back, his arm coming up to shield his eyes as if there were a glaring lamp in the room instead of shadows.
“I’m sorry,” I finally said.
“No, no. I’m just done in. It’s been a long day.” He rose on his elbow to give me a smacking kiss on the side of my cheek, and then turned away again to settle his pillow under him, punching it into place.
I studied the lines of his neck and shoulders, my mind whirring. What had I done or not done? Was it that I’d laughed at him—at us? As I lay there feeling stunned and confused, Jock began to snore lightly. How could he sleep at such a moment? It was our wedding night, and I was alone.
I kicked my way out of my dress and then washed my face in the basin, stripping off the paint and the waxy lipstick, being careful not to look in the mirror. I had packed only a flimsy nightgown, something Emma had found in a lace shop, and it was cold against my skin. Back in bed, I stretched out next to Jock’s hulking form. He made a solid mountain, seeming to take up even more space now that he was unconscious. He breathed on gutturally, dreaming his unknowable dreams while I lay there in the dark, willing myself to sleep.
The next morning at Nairobi Station we climbed aboard the train that would take us to Mombasa, and then onto the ship that would ferry us to India for our honeymoon.
I was Beryl Purves—and still a virgin.
In Bombay the air was full of spices and the crying sitars of street musicians. White bungalows crowded the lanes, with peeling shutters that closed at the hottest part of every day and then opened again at night when the sky went red and deep purple. We stayed with Jock’s aunt and uncle, in their compound below the posh Malabar Hill. Jock’s parents and two of his three brothers were there, having come to see if I was up to snuff. I wanted to have a long look at them all, too—the new family I’d won, as if in a lottery.
On the voyage, Jock had told me how his family had moved to India from Edinburgh when he was a boy, but I found it hard to remember details of landholdings and business mergers when I stood and looked at them—a band of ruddy, high-boned Scots in a silky brown Indian sea. Jock’s mother was the pinkest of all, like a flamingo in bright silk. She wore her auburn hair in a high coil that was being quietly taken over by strands of pure white. Jock’s father, Dr. William, was a version of Jock, with strong-looking hands and bright blue eyes that winked at me, trying to put me at ease, as his wife asked a string of questions that weren’t really questions.
“You’re very tall, aren’t you?” she kept saying. “Unnaturally so, don’t you think, Will?”
“I don’t think I’d go so far as to say unnatural, darling…. ” His brogue tipped the ends of his sentences up expectantly. I always thought he was about to say something more, but then he didn’t.
Jock patted my knee nervously. “It means she’s healthy, Mother.”