In September, Ringleader ran for his life at the St. Leger and placed second without a waver or a flinch, no swelling, no whiff of his troubled history, as if he’d been reinvented. When I stood at the edge of the winners’ enclosure and watched D accept his silver cup, I felt good about the work I’d done, that I’d read Ringleader correctly and saw what he needed to become great again—what he was meant to be.
Everyone had come to town for the race. Eastleigh was overrun with grooms and trainers, so D arranged to have a canvas tent put up on the lawn of the club for me, with my name on a stake out front. It wasn’t glamorous. I had to stoop in half to climb inside, crawling through mosquito cloth, but Berkeley thought it might be fun to have a drink there. He turned up with a chilled bottle, and we sat outside the tent flap on stools.
As always, he was turned out in beautiful clothes, but he looked pale. Perhaps he’d grown thinner, too, but when I asked about his health, he brushed me off. “You see there?” he pointed to a small cottage not far away in a grove of eucalyptus trees. It was made of stucco, with a rounded door and its own miniature garden—like something from a storybook. “That’s where Denys stayed for years…before he moved out to Ngong.”
“You should have told me about Denys and the baroness. They’re in love, aren’t they?”
Berkeley’s eyes grazed over mine. “Should I have? I thought you weren’t interested.” We fell silent for a few minutes as he refilled our champagne glasses. Swarms of bubbles crested into buttery-looking foam. “In any case, I’m not sure how long it will last.”
“Because Denys can’t be caught?”
“There’s ‘settling down,’ and then there’s Denys. He brought her back a ring from Abyssinia made of such soft gold it can be shaped to fit any finger. She’s been wearing it like an engagement ring, missing the point, of course. Not that I don’t love Tania”—he used Denys’s pet name for Karen—“I do. But she shouldn’t forget who Denys is. Trying to domesticate him won’t work. It’s certainly not the way to his heart.”
“If the reins are too tight, why has he moved there?”
“He loves her, of course. And it makes some things easier.” He combed his moustache with his fingertips absentmindedly. “She’s had some fairly brutal headaches lately. Money trouble.”
“You heard about the fiasco with my mother, I’m sure.”
“Ah yes.” He grimaced. “The widow Kirkpatrick and the leaking rooftop.”
“I’m still so mortified.”
“The rent on Mbagathi would only have been a drop in the bucket anyway.” His eyes lit up for a brief moment at his own joke before he said, “Where do things stand with your mother now?”
“Damned if I know. She’s in town somewhere, I heard. The whole situation is more and more bizarre. Why are people so complicated?”
He shrugged. “What would you hope for with her—if it could be anything you liked?”
“Honestly, I couldn’t even say. To care less, maybe. She was away for so long, I didn’t imagine she could still do harm, but now…” I let my voice trail off.
“My father died when I was young. We all thought it was rather fortunate at first. It simplified all sorts of things. But over time…well. Let’s just say I’ve developed a theory that only the vanished truly leave their mark. And I still don’t feel I’ve sorted it out. Maybe we never do survive our families.”
“Oh, dear. And this is meant to cheer me up?”
Under his moustache, his lips stretched into a wan smile. “Sorry, darling. At least Tania hasn’t held your mother’s bad behaviour against you; I’m certain of it. I’m riding out there later for dinner. Come along.”
I shook my head. “I’m thinking of turning in early.”
“You have the energy of ten men and you know it.” He fixed me with a prying look. “I think you’re pining over Denys, and if you are, darling, he’s—”
“No, Berkeley.” I cut him off. “No warnings, and no more advice. I can fend for myself, thank you very much, and if knocks are coming my way, I’ll find a way to take them, all right? I have a hard skull.”
“You do,” he conceded, “though I’m not sure anyone’s is hard enough. Not when it comes to these sorts of things.”
We finished the bottle, and he went off to Ngong while I lit the lamp and tucked myself into the cot in my tent, pulling the little volume of Leaves of Grass from my satchel. I had made off with it like a thief months before—and couldn’t quite bring myself to give it back, not yet. Opening the book I read, I think I could turn and live with animals. What moved me about the poem, I realized, was that Denys had seen me in it. The self-sufficiency and free-spiritedness Whitman was celebrating, the connection to wild things and wildness—that was a part of me, and Denys, too. We recognized these things in each other, no matter what else was true or possible.
A breeze lifted the canvas flaps and stays. Through a triangle of mosquito netting, the night pulsed. There were a host of stars in the sky, all of them close and sharp.