—
The next day the clouds parted and the sky went a deep fresh blue, and we went out on a small shooting expedition. Ostriches had got into the garden and plucked through most of the baby lettuces. There were dung and feathers everywhere as the birds lurched through the patch taking what they wanted.
Both Denys and Karen looked well rested and happy, when I had slept unpleasantly. Still, tired as I was, and slightly embarrassed by what I had learned the night before, Denys’s confidence and ease impressed me, as they always seemed to.
“These birds have brains the size of coffee cherries,” Denys explained, hoisting his slim-line Rigby effortlessly onto his shoulder. “If you aim wide, they’ll often gambol right into the shot.”
“Why not shoot into the sky?”
“It’s somehow not enough. They need to feel the whizzing of the cartridge to panic properly.” He sighted down the barrel and took expert aim. The group startled as one animal, and then went blundering off in a noisy scatter, awkward as unmanned wheelbarrows.
We laughed at them—it was impossible not to—and then made sure the fencing was secure again. After that we walked together to the top of the ridge to see Karen’s view. Her deerhound, Dusk, led the way while I trailed a little behind, thinking about how lightly Denys wore his body. There wasn’t the smallest twinge of self-consciousness in him. He knew how to stand and where to put his arms and his feet, and how to accomplish what needed doing—and never seemed to doubt himself or any part of the world he moved in. I understood why Karen was drawn to him, even if she still cared for Blix and appeared determined to remain his wife.
“Where did you get your keen eye?” I asked him when I’d caught up.
“On the golf links at Eton, I suppose.” He laughed. “What about yours?”
“How do you know I have one?”
“Don’t you?”
“I learned from the Kips on my father’s land. You should see me with a slingshot.”
“As long as I’m out of range.” He smiled. “I’d like that.”
“Bror taught me to shoot,” Karen said as she fell into line with us. “At first I didn’t understand why anyone would want to do it. But there’s something sort of ecstatic in it, isn’t there? Not bloodlust but a powerful connection you feel with all of life. Maybe that sounds cruel.”
“Not to me. Not if it’s done with honour.” I was thinking of arap Maina, of his warrior’s skill but also the way he had great respect for even the smallest creature. I’d felt that so strongly whenever I’d hunted with him, but also every time I’d walked beside him, as I was doing with Denys now. For some reason, being near Denys seemed to put me in touch with those years at Green Hills. Maybe it was because I saw a graceful and utterly competent warrior in him and was reminded of the warrior in myself, the bit of Lakwet I still carried with me.
By then we’d climbed above the coffee plants and thorn thickets and a narrow, twisting riverbed winking with quartz. The hill flattened out into a kind of plateau, and from there we could see straight down into the Rift Valley, its crags and ridges like pieces of a broken bowl. The rain had finally cleared, but a billowy ring of clouds rested over Kilimanjaro to the south, its flat top painted with snow and shadows. East and a little north, the Kikuyu Reserve drew itself out in a long rolling plain all the way to Mount Kenya, a hundred miles or more away.
“You can see how I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” Karen said. “Denys wants to be buried here.”
“A pair of eagles have an eyrie somewhere nearby,” he said. “I like the idea of them soaring nobly over my carcass.” He squinted into the sun, his face brown and healthy, his long limbs throwing purple shadows behind him. There was a single line of perspiration running along his back between his shoulder blades, and his white cotton sleeves were rolled over his smooth, tanned forearms. I couldn’t imagine him any other way but this: every inch of his body absolutely and completely alive.
“The Kikuyu put out their dead for the hyenas,” I said. “If we could choose, I think I’d take eagles, too.”