There was more than a whiff of Emma Orchardson in Viola. If I let her, I thought, she might go on to suggest I wear a hat and gloves, but my rough edges weren’t going to matter a whit once Wrack hit a win and good money. I had only a few short months—just until July to get him ready for the Produce Stakes, which would be run in Nairobi. Until then, I would work hard and not let myself get distracted.
Throwing myself into training was easy to do in Molo. I rose before dawn, toiled all day, and fell into bed exhausted. Only sometimes very late at night did I let myself think about what might be happening at the Muthaiga Club, what joke Berkeley might be telling, with what in his glass, what the women wore dancing or at tea, and if anyone ever mentioned my name, even in passing. If it was a very long night, and sleep didn’t come at all, I would let every guard down and think of Denys. Perhaps he was sloped in one of Karen’s low leather chairs by the millstone table, reading Walt Whitman and listening to some new recording on the gramophone. Or in his storybook cottage at the Muthaiga, sipping at nice scotch, or off in the Congo, or in Masai country after ivory or kudu or lion, and looking up, just then, at the same tangle of stars I could see from my windows.
How close people could be to us when they had gone as far away as possible, to the edges of the map. How unforgettable.
One morning Pegasus and I rode out from Westerland to get supplies. I was hunched over the saddle in my buckskin coat, fingers cramping with cold, when I saw the canopy of a motorcar folded and propped, throwing back chilly light. A man stood bent over the engine, wearing dungarees and moccasins much like my own. There weren’t many motorcars in Molo, which was as far behind Nairobi in time as Nairobi was behind London. It was a difficult place to get to, the steep escarpment wanting to wall you out. It was a hard place to break down, too, so I knew I should help if I could.
“Is there something I can do?” I called out from the saddle.
“What’s that?” He straightened from behind the canopy, wiping oil-blackened hands on an oil-blackened bit of cloth. He was young, I saw, with a sweep of almost-black hair. His breath rose in puffs past thin lips and a dark, trimmed moustache.
“You’ve got yourself into a spot here.”
“I haven’t given up yet.”
“You must know about engines then.”
“Not really, but I’m learning. This one seems to want to challenge me—to see if I’m serious.”
“I don’t think I’d have much patience for that.”
“You don’t think this one tests you?” He pointed at Pegasus.
I laughed and climbed down from my saddle, holding on to the reins. “We test each other,” I conceded. “But that’s more the natural order. Men and horses have lived together for centuries. I sometimes think the autos will all break down and be abandoned and we’ll find them like skeletons on the side of the road.”
“That’s a nice picture you’re painting—but I predict it will go the other way. The auto is just the beginning. The tip of things. Men only want to go faster and feel freer.”
“Pegasus is enough for me, thank you.”
He smiled. “Pegasus, eh? I’m sure he’s very fast, but if you ever went up in an aeroplane you’d swallow your words—and your heart as well, maybe.”
I thought of Denys and JC and Maia—each of them alive with the talk of flight. Above us in the sky there was nothing at all, not even clouds. “What’s it like?”
“Like breaking through everything that ever wanted to rein you in. There are no barriers up there—nothing to stop you from going on for ever. All of Africa stretches out under you. It doesn’t hold anything back or want to stop you.”
“I might guess you’re a poet.”
“A farmer, actually.” He grinned. “I have a little plot up near Eldama. What do you do around here?”
When I told him, we quickly put two and two together. He was Gerry’s silent partner, Tom Campbell Black; he owned part of the Baron. “You’ve got a fine horse,” I told him. “I’m banking he’ll win something big come July. Maybe then you can buy that aeroplane.”
“Can I hold you to that?” He bent over the engine again and made a few last adjustments. “Mind your horse, I’m going to give it a crank.” After half-a-dozen lurching wheezes, the engine clanked to life. I watched him fold the canopy and settle his tools in the boot while Pegasus stamped beneath me. He was cold. I was, too.
“Good luck to you,” I called out over the noisy churning of the motor, and we both waved goodbye.
—
Within a few months, things in Molo took a turn without warning. One of the stable doors at Westerland had a rusty hinge, and Melton Pie got out late one night and panicked somehow. She ended up tangled in some wire fencing, her barrel and cannons badly torn. She would recover, but the veterinary bill was shocking. George and Viola were furious and wanted to pin it on me.
“How’s a rusty hinge my fault?” I asked, when the two had me driven into a corner one night in their library at Inglewood.
“She was in your care!” George railed. “You should be overseeing everything.”