—
Two hours later, I drove them away from the hotel, the boys spitting over the open sides of the borrowed car into the dust. Clara chided them distractedly, and then said, “I just can’t get over how much Nairobi has changed. It’s a proper town now. You should have seen it back then.”
“Well, you’ve been gone a long time.”
“In those days you couldn’t walk for the goats. A postal office no bigger than a can of beans. No proper shops. No one to talk to.” She swatted at the still-spitting boys with her handkerchief, and turned around. “I just can’t get over it.”
She didn’t seem embarrassed to be speaking of the past with me. She didn’t seem to remember I was a part of her past in the colony, in fact. Though maybe that was best, when I thought about it—if we could treat each other more impartially, as if there were nothing to apologize or make amends for. As if nothing had been lost. Then perhaps there might not be any further pain ahead. I hoped not as I squeezed the steering wheel with my gloved hands, pointing us out of town on the rutted road and towards Mbogani.
—
It had been more than a month since my last visit to Karen’s. I went to the main house first. Karen was up the slope at the factory but heard the motor and came running, her hair windblown, a fingerprint of coffee dust on her cheek. There was no sign of Denys anywhere. Perhaps he was away still—or again.
“I’m sorry I look a fright.” Karen extended her hand to Clara. “Today we’re busy with a harvest.”
“Beryl explained all you do here on the ride out. I admire what you’ve taken on. And your house and lawn are so beautiful.” Clara swept around in an appreciative circle.
“You’ll want some tea—or sandwiches?”
The boys perked up at the mention of more food, but Clara shushed them. “We’ve had our tea.”
“I’ll ride out to the house with you then. Let me just change my shoes.”
—
We motored along the winding road to Mbagathi while the sweet-smelling trees pushed in at us through the windows of the car.
“Oh, it’s quaint,” Clara said when we arrived. “We’ll be very snug here.”
“You’ll be staying for a while, too, Beryl?” Karen asked.
“I hadn’t thought.” I stalled, wondering how comfortable I’d be. Clara was a stranger, and a complicated one at that.
“But of course you must. We haven’t caught up properly.” Clara turned to the boys, who were already down in the dust watching a Hercules beetle towering forward with a twig in its staglike pincers. “Tell her we need her.”
“Yes,” Ivan said. Alex grunted, never taking his eyes from the beetle.
“It’s settled then.”
Karen lent us her cook and her houseboy, and left my mother with the names of several Kikuyu totos who would be there the next day ready to work if Clara would have them.
When she left, Clara said, “I wouldn’t have whispered a word while the baroness was here, but the house is a little simple, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so. No one’s lived here for a while.”
“It’s much smaller than I imagined.”
“There are three bedrooms, and you are three.”
“Not for tonight,” she clarified.
“But I can sleep anywhere. I’m not fussy.”
“That’s a wonderful skill, Beryl. You always were the toughest of us.”
I flinched, involuntarily, and rearranged myself in my chair. “Dickie’s been jockeying, you said?”
“Yes, and very good at it. Do you remember how he could ride?”
I nodded vaguely.
“I know he’d want to be here now, but he hasn’t been feeling well. He never had a strong constitution, as you know.”
I remembered so little…skinned knees when the farm was raw and full of obstacles. Him kicking me once, hard, in my side as we fought over a toy. But even that was too much, in a way. It would have been simpler to have forgotten every last stitch.
“He’s going to send money as soon as he can, naturally,” she went on, her eyes beginning to well up again. “Forgive a silly woman, Beryl. Forgive me.”
—
That night, I tossed and turned on the sofa near the hearth, feeling unsettled by Clara, her strange combination of neediness and amnesia. I found myself wishing that I hadn’t answered her first telegram or that she hadn’t thought to send it. But we were here now, stuck in a curious limbo.
Sometime past midnight, long after the fire had died away, it began to rain. I heard the pattering getting louder, and then Clara appeared, kneeling at my side. She wore a nightgown and robe, and held a guttering candle. Her feet were bare and her hair tumbled down her back, making her look very young. “It’s pouring.”
“Try to ignore it. We get lots of rain at this time of year.”