“I don’t know. Maybe our mistakes make us who we are.” He fell quiet for a few minutes, and then said, “The only thing I’m really afraid of is shrinking away from life, not reaching for the thing…you know?”
“I think so, yes.” I rested my hand on his heart. Its soft drum sounded through my palm. It was true that many of the twists and turns that had led me to this room had been painful and costly, and yet I hadn’t ever felt more fully alive. I was terrified, but I didn’t want to run from him. I wouldn’t…not if I could help it. “Denys?”
“Mmm?”
“I’m glad we’re here now.”
“Yes,” he said against my lips, while above us the rain thundered on. The whole roof could have come down on our heads for all I cared. I was in Denys’s arms. I would happily have drowned.
From the first trumpets to the roar and release of the grandstand, races are quick and ephemeral things. Ten horses galloping with everything they have in them. A mile and three-quarters, no time at all, and yet enough time—curled and poised and expanding like breath—for the race to be won and lost many times over.
At the Produce Stakes, Wrack went like the wind and like pure unfettered courage, thundering out in front the whole way. I kept him in my glasses, afraid to look away for even a moment. Ruta stood beside me, as still as a prayer, while the lead was stolen from Wrack, one hair’s breadth at a time. He never relinquished anything, never stopped pulling. But at the tape, a quick-boned gelding took it and I finally breathed, deflated.
“Did you see how close it was?” Ruta said when the dust cleared and my heart had started again. “The next time he runs, Wrack will remember this and give more.”
“I don’t think it works that way for horses, Ruta.” I was trying to collect myself, thinking of next time, too—if Wrack’s owner, Ogilvie, would let us have him again.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. They don’t have memories like we do. Every race is new for them.”
But when we went to Ogilvie, he was far more inclined to side with Ruta. “Did you see how close that was? He’ll win next time.”
And he did.
—
For the remainder of 1925, my horses won and placed often enough so that Nairobi’s close-knit racing world finally seemed ready to let me in, and to believe I belonged there. D asked me back to Soysambu, telling me, whether it was now or later, there would always be a place for me in his stables. Ben Birkbeck wrote to say he was keen to give me horses, and that I appeared to be on track to take over my father’s reputation in the colony. At one of my events, I spotted my mother in a towering feathered hat, cheering me on. I hadn’t seen her for over a year, and felt a jolt, stinging and complex. I still didn’t know who she was in my life, or how to be anywhere near her without feeling waylaid. Maybe I never would.
“It makes me proud to see you doing so well,” she said when she searched me out afterwards. “Congratulations.”
I watched her sip at a carnation-pink cocktail and listened to her news. She was living up near Eldoret with Dickie and the boys, and trying to find some way to help Dickie make ends meet, but having very little luck.
“I’m sorry things are difficult,” I told her, and was surprised to find I actually meant it. Maybe Berkeley had been right about family—maybe we never survive them, or anyone we love. Not in the truest way. My feelings for Clara were tangled at the root, unresolvable. Whether I liked it or not, I would always carry the ghost of her leaving. But it also didn’t seem right somehow to walk away and ignore her need. “Is there something I can do?”
“We’ll manage,” she said, curiously stoic. She finished her drink and readied herself to leave, saying, “It is wonderful to see you’re getting what you deserve.”
—
With my string of wins, I could finally begin to pay Ruta what he was worth, and pamper his wife with new shoes and cooking pots. I could buy a proper bed for my tent under the stands, too, and put away money for a car—but I wasn’t going to rest on my efforts or trust that the flush days would last.
I felt the same way about Denys. Every hour with him was sweet and stolen. I began to borrow a motorcycle of Karen’s, to visit him when he was at Mbogani—and somehow the thrill of the motorbike beneath me, bouncing over the hard red dust, careening past deep potholes and stones, was like the sensation of being near him. Both were dangerous, both a bold and unforgivable form of trespass. Karen would have died a dozen times over to know I was at Mbagathi under the holey roof, in her lover’s arms, while she was away in Denmark—but I couldn’t think of that, or of her. If I did, I couldn’t have any of it, and that would be so much worse.