Dinner was served at a long low table near the fire. It was always cool at night in the highlands, but this blaze was also meant to be ornamental. It set the room glowing and Idina’s cheeks, too, as she held court at the far end of the table. The wide hearth opened just behind her, glinting along the tips of her hair. Above her, a twisted set of buffalo horns stabbed out from a wooden plaque.
There was something about Idina that reminded me of a hunting kestrel or kite. It was her hard, bright eyes as well as her words—the expectation that everyone was just like she was, constantly hungry, with little concern for who might get hurt along the way, or how. I couldn’t understand why Frank would want to spend time with this crowd. They were bored, naughty children with highballs and morphine and sex for their toys. People were toys, too. Idina had invited me into her bathroom to bat at me like a mouse, curious about whether I would freeze or run. Now she began a game, which was another version of the same manoeuvre. It was a parlour game where everyone contributed a line to a story that moved in a circle. The point was confession.
Idina launched us forward. “Once upon a time, before Kenya was Kenya, I hadn’t even met my lion and didn’t know how smitten and changed I would be.”
“You are sweet to me,” Joss said, beaming a little dementedly in the firelight. “Once upon a time, before Kenya was Kenya, I bathed with Tallulah Bankhead in a tub brimming with champagne.”
“Didn’t that tickle?” Charles scoffed. Idina didn’t bat an eyelash.
“In the nicest way,” he purred. “Now you, Beryl.”
“I’m too drunk,” I said, trying to avoid the game altogether.
“Oh, posh!” Joss cried. “You’re dead sober. Play along, please.”
“Can’t we have cards instead? I don’t understand the rules of this one.”
“You need only to say something true about the past.”
Only? The game was placid and tame and, yes, childish on the surface. But the point was to see if you could force the mouse you’d cornered to show you its insides. I didn’t want to tell these people a single thing about myself, particularly from the precious past. Finally I said, “Once upon a time, before Kenya was Kenya, I put a dead black mamba snake in my governess’s bed.”
“Aha! I knew you had some nastiness in you!” Joss said.
“Remind me not to make you angry,” Idina added.
“Show us what you do with Frank’s black mamba.” Charles cackled like an idiotic schoolboy, and everyone laughed along.
The game went round and round—on and on—and it seemed I would only be able to play, or even survive the night, if I did get drunk. It was difficult to catch up with this crowd. I had to make a real effort, and when I finally succeeded, I succeeded too well. The whisky made me maudlin, and for every confession I managed to reveal aloud, another unspoken confession thrummed through me and threatened to bring me down. Before Kenya was Kenya, Green Hills was alive and my father loved me. I could jump as high as Kibii and walk through the forest without making a sound. I could bring a warthog out of its hole by crinkling paper. I could be eaten by a lion and live. I could do anything, for I was in heaven still.
By midnight, when everyone had grown glittery-eyed and nearly delirious, Idina moved onto another game. She made us sit in a circle and blow a feather into the centre. Whomever the feather landed nearest would be our bedmate for the night. At first I thought she was joking, but when Honor blew her feather into Frank’s lap, the pair simply got up and walked down the hall, Frank’s back wide and square next to Honor’s slim form, while no one so much as leered at them. My head swam with the whisky. Everything tipped and receded in a tunnel effect. Sounds reached me with a slight delay. Now Idina seemed to be laughing because Charles had got on his hands and knees and was bringing the feather to her with his teeth.
“But I’m old hat for you, darling.” She pretended to swat at him with her cigarette holder. “You can’t want me.”
“It’s all a blur.” He laughed. “Show me again.”
When the two had lurched off down the hall, I looked at Joss, feeling nauseated. I had drunk much too much. My tongue was thick and coated in my mouth. My eyes felt heavy and dull. “I’m going to bed.”
His eyes were glassy and mirrorlike. “Isn’t that the point?”
“No, really. I don’t feel well.”
“I have something for that.” He stroked the inside of my thigh, his hand like a pressing iron through the silk. He moved to kiss me and I pulled away reflexively. When he looked at me again, his eyes had come into focus more. “Frank said you might be a little cool at first, but that I shouldn’t give up.”
“What?”
“Don’t play the lamb, Beryl. We all of us know you’ve been around.”
I wasn’t at all surprised by Joss, but if Frank had meant to throw me to the wolves by bringing me here, he had another thing coming. Without a word I stood and walked down the hall, but the door to our room was closed. I banged at it with the flat of my hand. Only laughter came back.