I walked them out, and after their Ford’s quavering headlamps had passed from sight, I was alone with the Southern stars. How had I got here, exactly? The shadowy Aberdares were the same as they had ever been and the forest sounds, too, and yet I wasn’t. I’d forgotten myself. I’d let one dodgy, fearful choice roll into another, somehow thinking that through this twisting and sticky route, I could still arrive at freedom. Arap Maina would have clucked and shaken his head to see me. Lady D would have gazed at me with those wise grey eyes of hers and said—what? That I had to eat humble pie? I didn’t think so. And what of my father? He had raised me to be strong and self-sufficient—and I wasn’t that now. Not by a long shot.
From somewhere nearby, a hyena whined, high and breathy, and another answered. The night pushed at me from all its edges. It seemed I could either walk into Jock’s house and close the door and continue with this nonsense, or I could plunge out into the dark with no map for what happened next. Jock could come after me in a full-blown rage for smearing his name. Friends and neighbours might slowly and subtly turn away or snub me for breaking rank, the way they had with Mrs. O. I might never see my horses again or might go completely broke trying to find my way without Jock’s support. I could fail in so many ways but, even so, there was no choice really.
When I went into the house again, I turned down all the lamps and padded to my room in the dark. Soundlessly, I packed my few things quickly and was on my way before midnight.
“Do you think Jock will come after me?” Boy asked when I recounted the whole story back at Soysambu. “Now that he knows about us?”
“Why would he? His whole argument has been about keeping up appearances and avoiding gossip. If anything, he’ll make my life harder or dig in more about the divorce.”
We were in my cottage after dark. It was a cool night, and as I warmed my hands against the chimney of the hurricane lantern, Boy’s face remained clouded over with his thoughts. He seemed unsettled and out of place, though he’d been in my room dozens of times. “And what about us?” he finally asked.
“What do you mean? We’ve had a few laughs, haven’t we? I don’t see why anything should change.”
“I only wondered.” He cleared his throat and pulled the Somali blanket more snugly around his shoulders. “There are women who’d be expecting a fellow to step up and get serious at some point.”
“Is that what you’re worried about? I can’t seem to get rid of the husband I’ve got, and anyway, what I’d really like to know is how it feels to be on my own. Not someone’s daughter or wife, I mean…but my own person.”
“Oh.” It seemed I’d surprised him. “There isn’t a lot of that kind of thinking around here.”
“Of course there is,” I told him, trying to draw a smile. “It’s just usually a man who’s doing it.”
—
Now that I wouldn’t have to keep up the ruse of weekend wife, I had more time and energy for my horses and was ready to give them my all. The St. Leger was an event for three-year-olds and Kenya’s most illustrious stakes race. D had a few promising contenders, but the best of the lot was Ringleader, a satin-black and high-stepping gelding. He was a real horse, and D was offering me a chance to train him. But he’d “got a leg,” as they say in horse speak. Before he’d come to Soysambu, he’d been overtrained, and his tendons had become sensitive, with a tendency to swell. With plenty of care and patience, though, he could still come back. He’d need soft, forgiving soil—so I took him down to the shore of Elmenteita and did all his galloping there along the moist edge while nearby herds of eland looked on curiously, and hordes of flamingos stirred over the lake’s surface and settled, squawking the same alarm over and over.
Late one afternoon, I was coming back from a training session there, my clothes and hair flecked with bits of dried mud, when I ran into Berkeley Cole again. It had been two years since my coming-out party, that night he and Denys Finch Hatton had recited poetry for me in blindingly white coats, both of them with manners like something out of a book about knights and gallantry. Now he’d driven over with a few other settlers to meet D about some recent political nonsense. I happened to find him out for a smoke, leaning against a length of fence railing as the last of the sun vanished behind him. His collar was loose and his auburn hair hatless and slightly windblown. It was almost as if someone had sketched him there.
“The last time we met you weren’t long out of pigtails,” he said after we’d recognized each other, “now you’re all over the papers. Your Jubaland was impressive.”
I felt myself squirm slightly under his praise. “I didn’t ever wear pigtails, actually. Couldn’t sit still long enough for them.”
He smiled. “It hasn’t seemed to hurt you much. And you’ve married?”
Not knowing quite how to describe my current state, I hedged. “In a manner of speaking.” In the several weeks since the terrible scene with the Birkbecks and the Arab door, I hadn’t heard a peep from Jock. I’d written to him making it plain that I wanted a divorce and wouldn’t back down, but he hadn’t answered me. Maybe that was all right, though. It was a relief simply to be in our separate corners.
“In a manner of speaking?” Berkeley’s mouth twisted in a way that was both wry and slightly paternal. But he didn’t press me further.