“Oh, you absolutely should,” she insisted, “if only so that you can come home and really see it for what it is. That’s my favourite part.”
After the table had been cleared, almost everyone gathered around the stone hearth on chairs or benches or great stuffed cushions. Karen draped herself in one corner like a piece of art, with a long ebony cigarette holder in one hand and a red glass goblet in the other. Denys sat close to her, and when I came nearer I could hear them discussing Voltaire. One rushed to fill the end of the other’s sentence. They looked like the same person halved or twinned, as if they’d always been sitting just like this, leaning close, their eyes alive.
—
The next morning I rose at dawn to go shooting with the men. I bagged more ducks than anyone but Denys and got several claps on the back for it.
“If I’m not careful, you’ll outshoot me,” Denys said, shouldering his Rigby.
“Would that be terrible?”
“It would be marvellous, actually.” He squinted into the sun. “I’ve always liked a woman who could aim well and ride better…the type who stands on her own two feet and keeps everyone on their toes. Other men can have the demure shrinking ones.”
“Was your mother like that? Is that where you get your appreciation?”
“She was a strong woman, yes. And she might have made a great adventurer if she hadn’t had so much to do.”
“You’re not keen on family life.” It was a statement. He was becoming clearer and clearer to me.
“It’s awfully small, isn’t it?”
“Africa is the cure, then, the opposite of being boxed in. Has it ever failed you? I mean, can you imagine this place starting to pinch on you, too?”
“Never.” He said it plainly, without a second thought. “It’s always new. It always seems to be reinventing itself, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” I agreed. It was exactly what I’d wished I’d said to Ginger the night before, what I thought without quite being able to put my finger on it. Kenya was forever shedding its skin and showing itself to you all over again. You didn’t need to sail away for that. You only needed to turn around.
When Denys strode off on those endless legs, I matched his pace in my muck-covered boots with a strong sensation that he and I were quite alike in several ways. I couldn’t compete with Karen on the side of refinement and intellect. I would never be able to…but neither did she have what I had.
When we returned to Mbogani, two fine autos were in the yard, and two new sets of guests had arrived to join the party—Mr. and Mrs. Carsdale-Luck, the wealthy pair who ran the top-notch horse farm called Inglewood up north in Molo, and John Carberry and his beautiful wife, Maia, who owned a coffee estate up north near Nyeri, on the far side of the Aberdares.
Carberry was an Irish-born aristocrat, apparently, but I would never have guessed. He was rugged-looking and lanky and fair, with a broad American accent he’d taken up, I was told, when he denounced Ireland and his heritage.
Karen introduced him to me as “Lord Carberry,” but he pumped my hand cheerfully and corrected her, nearly drawling, “JC.” Maia was fresh and lovely in summer-weight silk and lace stockings, with shoes that had her teetering above the dowdy, frumpish Mrs. Carsdale-Luck, who kept fanning herself and complaining of the heat.
“JC and I are off to America next week,” Maia was explaining to Karen and Mrs. Carsdale-Luck. “We’re going to finish my flight training there.”
“How many hours have you logged?” Denys asked keenly.
“Just ten, but JC says I’ve taken to it like a duck to water.”
“I’m dying to get up there myself,” Denys said. “I was certified in the war, but then haven’t had a chance to get back to it. Or a damned plane, for that matter.”
“Come up in ours,” JC said. “I’ll wire you when we’re back.”
“Wouldn’t you need a lot of training?” Karen asked warily.
“It’s like riding a bicycle,” JC said airily, and the two men strode off to examine a new rifle.
The aeroplane was utterly new for me. On the few occasions when I’d seen one high above, stitching a pale-blue sky with puffs of smoke, it seemed silly and wrong to me, a child’s toy. But Denys was clearly drawn to flight, and so was Maia.
“You’re not terrified you’ll drop right out of the sky?” Mrs. Carsdale-Luck asked her incredulously, her hand still flapping around her damp face and neck.
“We all have to go some way.” Maia smiled and a dimple appeared in her rosy cheek. “At least I’d make a proper splash.”