“Frank!” I shouted, but he wouldn’t answer me.
The hall was dark, and all the other doors were shut tight. Not knowing what else to do, I locked myself in one of the bathrooms and sat on the floor, waiting for morning. I knew the night would be long indeed, but I had things to remember…things I wouldn’t have shared earlier, not for all the money in the world. Before Kenya was Kenya, I threw a spear and a rungu club. I loved a horse with wings. I never felt alone or small. I was Lakwet.
When we returned from Slains two days later, Frank immediately retreated to his hunting cabin and I made plans to leave him. There wasn’t any panic in my actions. I packed slowly and carefully, filling my rucksack with things from my life before. Everything Frank had given me I left in the bureau—the money, too. I wasn’t angry with him. I wasn’t angry with anyone, I only wanted to find my own way, and to be sure of what I stood for again.
There were a few clues about what I might do next. Before I left London, Cockie had mentioned Westerland, a stable in Molo. Her cousin Gerry Alexander ran things there, and she thought the place might do for a second start. I had no idea if gossip about me had threaded that far north, or if Gerry was even in need of a trainer, but I trusted Cockie to help set me on the right path. First, though, I needed to go home.
After following the main road north to Naivasha, I headed east the least travelled way, straight into the open bush. Piled stones and gold grasses gave way to red dust and thorn trees, and unbroken savannah. The steady rhythm of Pegasus’s plates rang out. He seemed to know we weren’t going out for a casual ride, but didn’t balk at any of it, not the terrain or the eerie quiet, not even when a mammoth bushpig charged from a ravine a hundred yards ahead, storming over the path on squat, split hooves, squealing its rage at being startled. Pegasus only bobbed his head once, then pushed on with steady, smooth legs.
Finally we began to climb again, and to see the greening rim of the Mau Forest at the escarpment’s far side, dense trees and knuckled ridges, the land rolling out in the view I loved better than any other—Menengai, Rongai, the blue and furling Aberdares.
—
I found Jock inside just finishing lunch. I had wanted to catch him off guard and did, his face blanching before he pushed back from the table, twisting his linen napkin in his hand. “I can imagine why you’re here.”
“You didn’t answer my letters.”
“I thought maybe you’d change your mind.”
“Really?” I couldn’t believe him.
“No. I don’t know. Nothing has gone the way I planned.”
“I could say the same,” I told him. Part of me felt an urge to drag out all the casualties in our long, weary battle, to name everything and let him hear just what he’d cost me. But I had done my part, too. The losses were on my head as well. “Please, Jock. Just say you’ll give me the divorce. This has all gone on long enough.”
He stood and went to the window overlooking the valley. “I should have found a way to make it work. That’s what I keep thinking.”
“When the papers are drawn up, I’ll send them.”
He sighed loud and long, and then faced me. “Yes. All right.” His eyes met mine for a moment, and in those cold blue discs I finally saw—after all this time—a shadow of contrition, of real regret. “Goodbye, Beryl.”
“So long,” I said, and when I walked through the door, knowing I would never return, a great and old weight unfurled from my shoulders and lifted off into the sky.
—
I headed straight for Green Hills, where the tall grass had grown up thickly and what was still standing of the stables and main house had begun to tip irrevocably towards the earth. The mill was long gone and the fields overgrown, as if the land was taking it all back. I thought of the work my father had done, and the happiness we’d known—but I didn’t feel empty for some reason. I had the pure sense that I couldn’t ever truly lose the past, or forget what any of it had meant. To one side of the path that led into the forest, a high pile of stones stood marking Buller’s grave. I stopped Pegasus and held his lead while I sat for a while, remembering the day I had buried him. I had dug at the packed earth until the hole was deep enough so that no hyena would find him. Not even a stone had shifted from the cairn. Buller was safe in his long sleep—his grizzled scars and his victories. No unworthy predator could ever touch him.
Winding down the hill, I traced the path to the Kip village and tied Pegasus to the thorn lattice of the boma. When I entered the compound, a young woman named Jebbta was the first to notice me. I hadn’t seen her for years, not since we were both girls, but I wasn’t all that surprised when she turned from where she stood in her yard to see a baby threaded around her hip, round as a gourd.