“So are you,” he said.
But if Frank’s words flared with romance, they didn’t move me half as much as his loyalty did. That mattered more than anything—and also his belief in me. What I wished most for myself—to be back in Kenya and working—was what he wanted for me. From the moment Cockie had helped bring us together, Frank hadn’t done anything but insist he could set me up with a stable full of horses. I could train for myself, beholden to no one, he promised, and so far he’d been true to his word. Before nightfall we would board a train that would take us to Nairobi. Then we would motor to Knightswick, Frank’s cattle ranch at the base of the Mau Escarpment. There, I could begin to work and train again.
“Are you happy?” Frank asked as the ship eased into the harbour. It was a leviathan surrounded by bits of flotsam and colour and noise—the cacophony of Mombasa, curved palms and red sand, a high and pale-blue sky. The stevedores threw out the long ropes to the mooring, each gnarled length as thick as a man’s leg.
“I am. You know, even the smells of home make me feel more like myself. The colours, too. If only I didn’t have to see anyone, I think I’d be as right as rain already.”
“We could head straight for Knightswick.”
“That feels cowardly. Just stay nearby, will you?”
“Of course,” he said, and squeezed my hand.
—
Two days later, we roared into Nairobi in Frank’s Ford Runabout. The town looked the same as it had when I left—red dust streets lined with tin-roofed shops and cafés, wagons loaded down with supplies, pale-green eucalyptus trees soaring up on slim, shedding trunks, their leaves quaking in a light breeze.
Through the low pink gate of the Muthaiga Club, the drive curved along a stretch of manicured green turf. We pulled into the portico, and a white-gloved porter moved to open my door. My foot slid out gracefully in its lovely shoe. My dress and stockings and hat were all nicer than anything I’d ever worn at the club, and I felt that keenly as we moved through the shade-darkened foyer. Frank had one proprietary hand on my elbow and was steering me towards the bar as if I hadn’t been there hundreds of times. Maybe I hadn’t been. I’d shed at least one skin since I’d left for London and maybe more.
“Let’s see who’s about,” Frank said. He meant his friends. I didn’t know much about them except by way of gossip, and there was plenty of that. They were all of the Happy Valley set, the beautiful rich who hoisted themselves up on vast parcels of land near Gilgil and Nyeri, where they could frolic or play at farming with little heed to the rules or civilities that governed others. They had their own rules, or none at all—which could happen when you had too much money and too much time. They entertained themselves by borrowing one another’s husbands and wives and by smoking pounds of opium. Every now and again, one would turn up in Nairobi half-naked and delirious.
Frank wasn’t quite of that world, because he wasn’t refined enough—if that was the right word. He talked like a sailor and walked with a limp. As I saw it, the very rich kept him around because he knew where to find the best cocaine. He carried some with him always in a brown velvet bag. I had seen it come out in London once or twice, though I never touched it. I wasn’t curious about drugs at all. Even the idea of not having my wits about me made me feel too vulnerable. Frank respected that and didn’t try to change my mind or make me feel puritanical—at least in London. I wondered if things would be otherwise now.
It was the middle of the afternoon. Glossy wooden blinds were closed against the heat, making everything dark and slightly damp-feeling, cavelike. Frank surveyed the room like a prospector but saw no one he knew. We had a drink anyway, quietly, keeping to ourselves, and then he took himself back into town, seeing to his affairs, while I set myself up in one corner of the dining room and had lunch and coffee. I’d let him go because no one had even tried to approach me or even seemed to recognize me in my new clothes. I began to feel I really had changed into someone else until Karen came in in a broad white hat and coloured scarf. She looked me over, passing through, and then stopped dead. “Beryl. It’s you. You’ve come back.”
I lay my napkin aside and stood to kiss her. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“No, no.” She blinked like an exotic cat. “I only wondered how. Everything seemed so hopeless when you left.”
“It was.” I cleared my throat and made myself meet her eyes. “I hope to never be that low again, actually. How’s D?”
“Fully recovered—and irascible as ever. You know him.”
“Yes…I hope I do still. Six months is long enough for smoke to clear, but also for a divide to stretch and grow. I miss him.”