—
When I returned to Soysambu the next day, and for weeks afterwards, I continued to puzzle over what Cockie had said, wondering what her situation and bits of guidance actually meant for me. By her estimation, an affair was as de rigueur for the colonists as quinine tablets were for fever—a way to weather or temporarily forget marital unhappiness. But Boy wasn’t really an affair, was he? What he offered was purer and more animal than what Cockie was embroiled in with Blix, or so I was telling myself. Besides, it felt wonderful.
After a year of fumbling and embarrassing encounters with Jock, I was finally learning what sex was, and that I liked it. Boy would come into my cottage at night and wake me by roughly pressing against me, his hands everywhere before I was fully conscious. He had none of Jock’s tentativeness, and I found I wasn’t shy with him, either. I could move any way I liked and not spook him. I could turn him away and not hurt his feelings, because feelings had nothing to do with any of it.
One night he found me alone in the stable and led me to an empty loose box without saying a word. Turning me over onto a hay bale, his hands came around to the waist of my cotton shirt and tugged it open roughly. My ribs rocked against the bale and my teeth caught on bits of hay. Afterwards, he stretched out naked without a flicker of modesty, his arms crossed behind him. “You don’t seem like the same girl who snubbed me for several months running.”
“I don’t know what sort of girl I am any more, to tell the truth.” I rested one of my hands on his chest, lightly stroking the thatch of springy dark hair. “I grew up with the Kips. For them, sex doesn’t get all tangled up with guilt or expectations. It’s something you do with your body, like hunting.”
“There are people who’d tell you we’re exactly like the animals. Same appetites, same urges. It’s a nice idea.”
“But you don’t believe it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Someone always seems to get hurt.”
“It shouldn’t have to be like that. We have our eyes open, don’t we?”
“Of course we do. Your husband’s still in the picture, though. Does he have his eyes open?”
“Now you’re trying to rub my nose in it.”
“I’m not,” he said as he easily pulled me on top of him. “How could I be?”
—
The following Saturday when I went home to Njoro, Ben and Cockie’s car stood in our yard with luggage strapped to the boot. I parked D’s wagon behind it and rounded the veranda to see them sitting comfortably at our rattan table in the shade, having cocktails with Jock.
“We’ve saved you some ice,” Cockie said. She wore a loose silk dress and a hat with sheer netting that fell to the bridge of her nose. She looked lovely in it, and I was happy to see her. Her and Ben’s company would make my time in Njoro much more bearable than usual.
Jock fetched me a drink—a scarlet-laced Pimm’s with fresh lemon and orange peel over chipped ice, pretty as a picture—but he had an odd look on his face, and he didn’t try to give me his usual perfunctory peck on the cheek.
“Everything all right?” I asked.
“Yes.” He didn’t meet my eyes.
“You’ve really done wonders with the place,” Ben said. Before turning to ranching, he had been a major in the King’s African Rifles, and there was something military about him still, a precision and a clipped composure. With neatly trimmed dark hair and fine, straight features, he was considerably better-looking than Blix—but I already guessed he didn’t have Blix’s humour or his sense of adventure.
“Jock is the miracle worker,” I conceded. “There’s nothing he can’t plough or hammer into place.”
“Except maybe my wife.” He said it easily, almost cheerfully, as though the barb were harmless. Ben and Cockie laughed, and I tried to join them. I’d never been good at reading Jock, and certainly wasn’t now that we were living apart.
“We’ve just bought the parcel next door,” Cockie said. “We’ll have to play bridge at the weekends. I adore cards,” she went on. “Though Ben here would rather eat knives.”
Barasa came to refill our ice bucket, and we all had another while the sun rose a little higher in the sky—but I couldn’t shake the distinct feeling that something was off with Jock. Maybe he was punishing me for the scene at the Muthaiga when he’d stormed away half pissed. Maybe the whole fa?ade of our arrangement was finally starting to wear and crack. Whatever was happening, Cockie clearly felt it, too. When the four of us headed over to admire their new property before dinner, she clasped my elbow, letting the men get well ahead of us.