His machine was built like a rhinoceros, with heavy mud-painted tyres. I tethered Ringleader so he wouldn’t startle and went on foot to meet him as he came round the lake. The ground around the shore had gone boggy, and as his car idled, the tyres sank slowly into the muck. Denys didn’t seem remotely concerned.
“The road not fine enough for you today?” I asked him.
“You never know who you’ll run into this way.” He cut the motor and pushed off his hat, squinting up at me. “I saw you flying along the shore when I came up over the rise. I didn’t know it was you, but it was beautiful to watch. Thrilling, actually.”
“My horse is really starting to come along. I felt something new in him today. Maybe that’s what you saw.” Free of his helmet, Denys’s sparse brown curls were matted with sweat. Small flecks of mud had spattered along his forehead and cheekbones, and I felt an inexplicable urge to brush them off with my fingertips. Instead, I asked him where he was going.
“D’s sounded the alarm for one of his meetings. Apparently Coryndon has done something unforgiveable, as the committee sees it. D’s all set to tie him up and throw him in a cupboard.”
“Kidnapping the governor is at least as reasonable as all of D’s other ideas.”
“I try to stay out of it mostly. But today was such a nice day for a drive.”
“Mud and all?”
“The mud especially.” His hazel eyes sparked, catching the light for a moment before he resettled his hat, preparing to leave.
“Perhaps I’ll see you in town some time,” I told him.
“I’m not often there any more. I’ve recently moved out to Ngong, to stay with my good friend Karen Blixen.”
Surely he meant Blix’s wife, the mysterious baroness. “Is that right?”
“She’s wonderful. Danish. Runs a coffee farm all on her own while Blix is off stalking his rhino. I don’t know how she pulls it off, but she does.” His voice chimed with obvious admiration. “I imagine you’ve met Blix. There aren’t many pretty women who escape him.”
“Yes.” I smiled. “That was my take on him, too.” It was hard to know what Denys was actually saying about the baroness. Was he living with her, as if they were husband and wife? Or were they merely close companions, as he and Berkeley were? There was no way to ask directly, of course.
“The farm is so much nicer than town,” he went on, “and the air is champagne. It’s the altitude, I think.”
“Sounds like something Berkeley would say,” I remarked.
“I suppose it does.” He smiled again. “Come and visit us some time. We love to have company…and Karen has a small house sitting empty on her property just now. You could stay as long as you like. Come with a story, though,” he said, cranking the engine. “It’s one of our requirements.”
“A story? I’ll have to drum one up then.”
“Do that,” he said before he roared away.
A few weeks later, D called me in from the paddock and handed over a telegram addressed to me. I assumed it was a rare bit of news from my father—or perhaps some sort of demand from Jock—but the envelope had a smeared return address from London. Turning away from D, I broke the sticky seal with a sharp twinge of dread. DEAR BERYL—I read—HARRY HAS DIED AND THE BOYS AND I WILL RETURN TO THE COLONY STOP WOULD YOU PLEASE LOOK FOR LODGINGS?—WE DON’T KNOW ANYONE AND MONEY IS DEAR STOP MOTHER.
Mother? That word alone felt like a slap. I’d pushed her memory away long ago, as far as I could, but it lurched dizzily to life now. My eyes raced over the few sentences again. My throat was as dry as dust.
“Everything all right?” D asked.
“Clara’s returning to Kenya,” I said numbly.
“Good grief. I thought she’d vanished for good.”
“Apparently not.” I handed him the flimsy paper, as if it would explain anything. “Who’s Harry?”
“Harry?” He was quiet for a moment, reading, and then he sighed heavily and raked his hands through his hair. “Let’s have a nip of brandy, shall we?”
It wasn’t easy to drag the whole story out of D, but the drink worked to pry him open a little, and me as well. After an hour I had the gist of it. Harry Kirkpatrick was a captain my mother had met in her second year in Kenya, at a dance in Nairobi after a race meeting. Their involvement was meant to be a secret, but those kinds were hard to keep. By the time she left for London with him, Dickie in tow, the scandal had blazed through the colony.
“Obviously she married him at some point,” D said, “though I can’t say when. We fell completely out of touch.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me the truth?”
D cupped his brandy glass, thinking, and then said, “It might have been a mistake. Who’s to say? Everyone wanted to protect you from the worst of it. Florence was the loudest of all. She insisted it would only make everything worse.”
I thought of the day I’d pored over the map of England in Lady D’s atlas, and her saying she could tell me things about my mother if I wanted to know. Had she planned to invent a tale, a doctored version of the truth? Or had she begun to feel it was time I understood what had really happened? It was impossible to do more than guess now.