When Coquette arrived, she was the darling of the farm. Since we didn’t have any horses with her golden colouring, all the totos wanted to be near her and to touch her. She seemed to glow and bring good luck, and for several months everything went smoothly as she settled in and my father began to think and scheme over which horse should service her for the best possible result. Breeding is the most serious of matters for a horseman. Even before I could read I knew that every thoroughbred could be traced back to three original Arabian and Oriental sires from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, paired with a handful of very specific English dams. The long line of genealogy was lovingly and painstakingly laid out in The General Stud Book. Over dinner we would open the book and consult from it, along with the thick black ledger that kept a record of our own bloodstock—the old and new testaments of our bible.
After weeks of talking it through, it was decided that Referee would service Coquette when she came into season. He was a light chestnut Arab and compactly built at fifteen hands, with good hoofs, wide-open shoulder angles, and perfectly straight legs. He had a stride so even it seemed to eat up the ground in front of him effortlessly. We talked about the new foal a lot—the one that would come eleven months from the date of successful breeding, with his sire’s swiftness and his dam’s shimmering coat and graceful movements. He didn’t seem remotely imaginary to me. Our talking had already brought him to life.
—
One long, airless afternoon I was drumming up names for the foal and saying some out loud to Kibii as we sat under the wattle tree near the edge of the wide yard. Beyond the bluish ring of shade, the earth was like hammered metal and wicked as metal, too, or live cinders if you dared to walk on it. We’d spent the morning at gallops and then helping oil dozens of bridles, until our fingers cramped. Now we were drained but also restless, needled by the heat.
“What about Jupiter, or Apollo?” I suggested.
“He should be Jackal. This is a better name for a colt.”
“Jackals are so ordinary.”
“Jackals are clever.”
Before I could correct him, a tower of smoke came chuffing into view.
It was the noisy train from Nairobi, a dozen crude carriages that bumped so hard along the track you expected one to fly off or smash to pieces. Kibii twisted to look out over the slope. “Is your father expecting a horse?”
I didn’t think my father was expecting anything, but we watched him come rushing out of the stable, smoothing his hair and tucking in the tails of his shirt. He squinted down the hill against the sun and then quickly made his way to our new Ford wagon and cranked the moody engine. Kibii and I didn’t ask if we could join him, just trotted over and began to climb into the back.
“Not this time,” my father said, barely looking up from his task. “There won’t be room for everyone.”
Everyone? “Are guests coming, then?”
Without answering, he climbed behind the wheel and pulled away, pummelling us with clouds of rosy dust. Within the hour, we heard the buggy chugging back up the hill and caught glimpses of white. A dress. A hat with ribbons, and to-the-elbow gloves. This was a woman in the car, a beautiful one with a pile of glossy hair the colour of raven feathers, and a fancy lace-trimmed parasol that didn’t look as if it had seen a day in the bush.
“Beryl, this is Mrs. Orchardson,” my father said as they stepped out of the buggy. Two large trunks towered behind in the boot. She wasn’t here for tea.
“I’m so happy to finally meet you,” Mrs. Orchardson said, quickly looking me up and down.
Finally? I think my mouth fell open and stayed like that for a good long minute.
When we got inside the main house, Mrs. Orchardson looked around at everything with her hands resting lightly on her hips. Though my father had designed it simply, the place was solid, and a vast improvement from the hut it once was. But Mrs. Orchardson had never seen anything of that. She strode back and forth. There were cobwebs at all the windows, and the hearthstones were covered in layers of thick soot. The oilcloth on our table hadn’t been changed in years, not since my mother left. The narrow charcoal cooler we stored butter and cream in smelled rancid, like muck at the bottom of a pond. We’d grown used to it like everything else. The walls were hung with bits and bobs from hunting adventures—leopard pelts, lion skins, long, corkscrewing kudu horns, an ostrich egg the size and heft of a human skull. There was nothing fine or very posh in sight—but we’d been all right without niceties.
“Mrs. Orchardson has agreed to be our housekeeper,” my father explained as she pinched off her gloves. “She’ll live here in the main house. There’s plenty of room.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling punched in the windpipe. There was a room that could be used for sleeping quarters, but it was filled with tack and paraffin and tins of food and any number of things we didn’t want to see or deal with. The room meant we didn’t really need a housekeeper. And where would guests stay now that this woman, who was not a guest, had come to change everything?
“Why don’t you go out to the stables while we get settled here?” my father said in a tone that left no room for wriggling.