“No doubt he misses you, too.” Her eyes dropped to my pearls and then to my fine new shoes. I could see she was full of questions about how altered I was, but I doubted she would ask them.
“Stay and have a drink with me.”
“All right.” She sat down and removed her hat, smoothing her hair, which had been cut in a shingle, the new liberated style. I’d seen it everywhere in London but had never thought Karen would bend to the moment’s fashion. “Isn’t it terrible?” She laughed. “I’m not sure why I did it.” Then her expression changed, and she said, “What’s happened with your divorce? Are you finally free?”
“Not yet.” Cockie had urged me to write to Jock from Dorking, insisting on a divorce, but I hadn’t yet heard anything back from him. “Did Jock face charges here?”
“Not for that.” She looked serious, doubting.
“What then?”
“There was another incident recently. No one witnessed it, so it’s difficult to know what actually happened, but Jock apparently ran his auto into another car in Nakuru. Then he went after the couple inside, as if it were their fault instead of his. Both cars caught fire.”
“My God, was anyone hurt?”
“Thankfully, no. They held a trial for damages, but nothing was decided.”
“No doubt he was drunk.”
“One can only assume.” She plucked at the end of her scarf seeming embarrassed, and we sat silently for several strained minutes. Then she said, “You really do look well, Beryl. If I ever paint you, you should wear white. It’s very much your colour.”
In my hand, my cocktail glass was cool and smooth. Flecks of foamed gin and egg white clung to the chipped ice. I had fled to get away from scandal, but it was still here, lying in wait. There were many other still-unsettled things, a web of difficult truths that hadn’t been spoken and wouldn’t be sorted. And yet I was glad to see Karen again. I had missed her company.
“Did everything turn out all right?” Frank asked when he returned. Karen and I had already said our farewells.
“I suppose so. But being in town does make me wary. It can’t be long before gossip about us starts to burn through the outposts.”
“There was gossip in London, too. People love to talk rot. They can’t help themselves.”
“Well, I’m sick of it.” My gin was long gone. I stirred the dregs of it in my glass. “?‘I think I could turn and live with animals,’?” I said quietly.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing…just some poetry I heard once.” He shrugged and I pushed at the edge of the table with resolve. “I’m ready. Take me home.”
Frank didn’t have much of an interest in farming and hired out crop work so that he could spend his time shooting or visiting friends. His hunting cabin was ten miles from the main house at Knightswick, in the Kedong Valley. He slept there most nights with his tracker, Bogo, returning to see me every few days. We’d have lunch or dinner, and then he’d lead me to the bedroom. After he watched me undress, he’d stretch me out on the bed. He loved to hear my breath catch, to see and feel my hips moving, my hands clutching the sheets. He seemed to enjoy giving me pleasure even more than he wanted release for himself, and I guessed it made him feel as if he were taking care of me. He was, in his way.
Frank never forced himself on me, but still I can’t say I was ever attracted to him. He walked in an awkward, rolling way, like a trained bear, with squat square hands and feet, and his belly was round and taut as a drum. At dinner, his talk was coarse and gruff, but he never failed to ask me how I was feeling and what I’d been doing and thinking about. He’d tell me stories of the hunting he’d done or the rides he’d taken. He never asked me to accompany him when he went away, and that was fine with me. It was more than enough to have his company intermittently. When we had sex, I saw it as a kind of physical transaction. We were giving something to each other, even if it wasn’t exactly affection. I squeezed my eyes shut, or trained them on the curled grey hairs on his chest, and tried not to think that he was as old as my father. He was kind. He cared about me. He wouldn’t give up on me.