A Spear of Summer Grass

11



When we reached Fairlight, Ryder turned down the path to his boma without a backward glance. Gideon walked me into the garden where the clergyman Halliwell was standing chatting with Dora.

“Look, Delilah, Mr. Halliwell has brought us oranges!” she said, brandishing a basket of bright round green fruit.

“Our African oranges are green,” he explained. “My sister thought you might enjoy them. She bought a bushel only this morning and wanted to be a good neighbour. Hello, Gideon,” he said, a trifle more slowly. “I hope you’ve been a help to Miss Drummond.” He turned to me. “Gideon was educated at our mission school. One of the brightest youngsters to come through our doors.”

He had a fatuous smile, as if it never occurred to him that a fully grown Masai warrior ought not to be spoken to as if he were of no more significance than a lapdog. There was a casually dismissive air about his attitude.

“Gideon has been most instructive,” I said sharply. “He took me to meet his grandfather.”

Halliwell gave me a gentle shake of the head. “Tread with caution, Miss Drummond. Native ways are inscrutable to a mind that loves Jesus.”

“Well, I never claimed to love Jesus, Mr. Halliwell. In fact, we’re barely acquainted.”

Dora cut in swiftly. “Where are my manners? Mr. Halliwell, will you join us for some tea on the veranda?”

He agreed and I turned to Gideon. He was watching me closely, and as the clergyman moved away with Dora, Gideon pitched his voice low. “Do not wear your anger like a mask, Bibi. His kind are simple as children. They cannot help what they do not know.”

I gave him a broad smile. “I know you will not accept food or drink from me, but there is a fellow working in the kitchen. I hope you will take something from him before you make the journey home again.”

He nodded and gave me a wave as he headed to the kitchen. I joined Dora and Halliwell on the veranda. Dora passed me a glass of lemon squash with a warning glance. I rolled my eyes at her, and took a seat, stretching out my booted legs onto the arms of the planter’s chair as Ryder had done.

“It’s lovely country for walking, isn’t it?” Halliwell offered. I thawed a little then, and we fell to discussing the countryside. “Of course, one must always be careful of the wildlife, but it gives a fillip of excitement to one’s existence, I find. Danger lurks around every thornbush here. I am always telling Evelyn to be cautious when she goes out to paint.”

“Is she an artist?” Dora inquired politely.

“After a fashion. She does like to try to capture the landscapes here, so different from our native Kent. But she makes no claim to talent like Mr. Parrymore.”

“Kit’s talent is extraordinary,” I agreed. “He has developed tremendously as an artist since the time I knew him in New York.”

Halliwell sat forward eagerly. “His paintings are so full of life, of vibrancy—don’t you find? They almost seem to have a pulse, they are so alive.”

Dora sipped at her lemon squash while I lit a cigarette. “You surprise me, Mr. Halliwell. I wouldn’t have expected a clergyman to feel so strongly about art.”

He laughed. “I admit I do not have the same calling as many of my fellow men of the cloth. It was a decision of my parents’ making. We were brought up on a small estate outside of Canterbury. Our elder brother was the heir, of course, and Evelyn and I were made to follow the plan our parents laid out. I was sent into the church and she was to keep house for me. But our first love was always art. Alas, I was never given proper tuition in the subject, so my technique has never developed. Evelyn received some very rudimentary training from a drawing master for a few months. I’m afraid that is the extent of our formal education,” he added, his expression rueful.

I could tell Dora was about to say something pointlessly soothing, so I cut in.

“Why didn’t you run away?”

He blinked, like a rabbit just up from his hole. “I beg your pardon?”

I took a long pull on my cigarette just to heighten the moment. “Why didn’t you run away? Take your life in your own hands and make what you wanted out of it?”

He stared at me for a long minute, no doubt as mystified as if I had been speaking Mandarin.

At last he laughed again, apparently deciding I was harmless and perhaps a little mentally defective. “My dear lady, what a question! How simple you make it sound and how impossible.”

“Difficult,” I corrected. “Not impossible.” Dora stirred beside me, and I didn’t have to look at her to know she was wearing her disapproving expression. That’s what I always found so tiresome about the English. The long list of Things That Must Not Be Said.

“Not impossible,” I repeated. “You simply had to make up your mind to do without your parents’ help. Say goodbye to their money and you say goodbye to their interference.”

“You are serious,” he said slowly.

“As a grave. Nobody should have to do what they don’t want just because some moneybags relative makes it so. Purse strings are puppet strings, Mr. Halliwell. They can be cut.”

Dora couldn’t take it anymore. “She’s joking, of course, Mr. Halliwell,” she said soothingly. “She doesn’t actually believe that or she wouldn’t be here herself.”

It wasn’t like Dora to air the family’s dirty linen, but my reasons for being in Africa were common knowledge. It was, however, a symptom of her annoyance with me that she mentioned it.

“Oh, I believe every word of it. I just happen to be a hypocrite.” I bared my teeth at Mr. Halliwell in a crocodile smile. “I like nice things and I would be less than useless with a job.”

“A job!” He reached for his handkerchief and passed it over his brow. “I should think not. No properly brought up young lady should have to work for money.”

“I suppose Evelyn toils away at the mission school purely in hopes of a heavenly reward?”

Dora jumped to her feet. “Mr. Halliwell, have I shown you the changes I’m making to the garden? I should love to have your opinion. No, no, bring your drink. It’s too hot to go walking without some refreshment.” They left the veranda, but not before she gave me a backward glance that would have scalded milk.

I settled back into my chair to finish my lemon squash and cigarette. I had bought a cow, terrorized the farm manager, and offended the neighbours, I reflected. Not bad for a morning’s work.

* * *

My afternoon meeting with Gates was less than productive. He had apparently decided on a tactic of unctuous cooperation—at least on the surface. Whatever I suggested he approved enthusiastically, and then a few minutes later, he would casually drop in every reason why what I wanted wasn’t feasible. Then I would remind him who had the whip hand and he would fall in line before starting the whole process over again. It was exhausting, but by the time I’d finished with him, he had set a few of the Kikuyu to reinforcing the barn and building a rudimentary henhouse.

I was arguing with him over the size of it when Ryder appeared with a small dead antelope of sorts draped over his shoulders. “Dinner,” he said.

“Thank God. We haven’t gotten around to replenishing the stores and it’s been nothing but flatbreads and boiled eggs.”

He carried the antelope to the kitchen while I dismissed Gates, who scurried off with ill grace.

“I don’t think he likes you much,” Ryder observed.

I grinned. “Good.”

Ryder didn’t answer my smile. “Be careful. He can be a nasty piece of work.”

“Does he beat his wife like your friends do?”

“Anthony Wickenden is not my friend,” he said flatly. “And no, that’s one sin you can’t drop at Gates’ door. But he does like to harass the Kukes.”

“Why specifically the Kikuyu?”

“Because I’ve told the Masai to stay out of his way.”

“He would treat them worse?”

“Everybody does. The Masai are the lowest on everyone’s list, white or African.”

“But why?”

“You saw how they live. Mud huts and cow’s blood to drink. It doesn’t get more primitive than that.”

“Ryder, I am accustomed to indoor plumbing, feather beds, vintage wines and fast cars. This is all primitive to me.”

He grinned again. “Touché. Now, let’s finish getting your storeroom sorted.”

But rather than heading towards the house, he took the path leading to the road.

“Where are we going?”

“To my duka. What I brought was for the Kikuyu. Now it’s time to lay in supplies for you. I have everything you need. Including chickens.”

He wasn’t exaggerating. The little shop was almost an hour’s walk from Fairlight, but well worth the journey. A tin roof housed the shop and its deep porch, and on the porch in the shade of that tin roof, a small, plump Indian man with a turban sat at an elderly sewing machine. The fabric flew through his hands as he worked the treadle, and a small monkey perched on top, supervising. When we approached, the man jumped up and shouted into the building as he came to greet us.

“Mr. Ryder! And the lady of Fairlight!”

“Makes me sound like something out of Tennyson,” I murmured to Ryder.

Ryder introduced me properly to Mr. Patel and the fellow pumped my hand and bowed several times as he escorted us into the building. It was far more than a shop; it was Ali Baba’s cave. The walls were crammed to the ceiling with boxes and barrels and tins of food and supplies, while the counter was hung with a sign proclaiming it was an official post office. A small bar ran along one wall, and tucked in a corner were a few small rattan chairs fitted with chintz cushions. More chintz had been hung over the narrow doorway that separated the shop from the living quarters behind. Mr. Patel yelled through the curtain and in a moment a slender Indian woman wearing a pink sari appeared with a tray of glasses and a plate of small pastries. She was small, not quite my height, with heavy black hair that she had bound into a plait that swung like her hips whenever she walked.

Mr. Patel introduced me to his wife and told her to serve us. The glasses were full to the brim with very sweet tea and the pastries were stuffed with pistachios and drizzled with honey. She handed them out in turn with a smile that showed pretty white teeth against her dusky skin.

“Delicious,” I told her. I didn’t know if she spoke English, but she smiled anyway and hurried back through the curtain. The monkey had a glass as well and he drank politely, wiping his mouth after every sip. I looked up and saw that the curtain was very slightly parted, and only the gleam of one dark eye showed through. It wasn’t focused on me, though. It was fixed unblinkingly on Ryder.

Mr. Patel, who never seemed to stay still for more than a minute, bounded up and dashed behind the bar. When he returned, he handed me a thick stack of envelopes bound with a bit of rough twine.

“The post!”

“Rajesh fetches the post from Nairobi,” Ryder explained, “but it doesn’t go any farther. You have to come here to collect it or to send a letter. If a telegram arrives, Rajesh will send one of his sons out with it on the motorcycle.”

“Your sons?”

“Yes,” Mr. Patel said, smiling widely, “I am blessed with three strong boys. Almost fully grown.”

I thought of the slim, youthful Mrs. Patel and wondered how that was possible.

“The first Mrs. Patel died last year, very sad,” Mr. Patel told me, his voice pitched low. “I have taken a new bride to be mother to my sons and to bring me happiness. This is the Mrs. Patel you have met, my jewel.”

I flicked a gaze at Ryder who was studying his boots nonchalantly.

“How nice for you,” I told Mr. Patel. “And you have a motorcycle?”

“Oh, yes! Very reliable and very fast.”

I scarcely heard him. I was too busy thinking about his jewel and wondering if he knew what she got up to when he was off in Nairobi. I flipped through the stack of mail, noticing the return addresses. “Mossy, Nigel, Quentin. Bless them. And there are several for Dodo, too. She’ll be thrilled.”

I tucked the letters into my pocket, savouring the anticipation of reading them over a long cool gin and tonic. We chatted with Mr. Patel until the pastries were nothing but sticky crumbs on a plate. I spent the next hour scouring Ryder’s shelves for anything and everything we might need at Fairlight. It added up and when Mr. Patel presented me with the total, I was horrified.

I turned to Ryder. “I’m afraid I don’t have any money with me.”

“It’s useless out here anyway, at least on a daily basis. It will just go on account, settled quarterly. Rajesh, put it on the Fairlight account.” Mr. Patel opened a battered green ledger and began to make a tidy notation.

“Who pays for that?” I demanded.

He flicked a glance to Mr. Patel who looked faintly embarrassed. “It is the responsibility of the estate to settle the account.”

“When is the reckoning?”

“Quarterly, memsa.”

“And did Gates settle the account for the last quarter?”

“I regret to say this is not so.”

“How many quarters is the estate in arrears?”

He traced his finger lightly down the page of his ledger. “Six, memsa.”

I turned to Ryder. “Six quarters? For a year and a half, Fairlight hasn’t paid its bill?”

He looked away. “These things happen.”

“These things do not just happen, and that’s a damned poor way to run a business. Mr. Patel, how much is the total?” He named a sum which made me suck in my breath. “I would like for you to prepare a report, please. Itemize the bill so I can see precisely what has been purchased by the estate. I will get you your money.”

He perked up considerably then. “As you wish, dear lady. I will have the bill prepared and delivered to Fairlight at the earliest possible opportunity.”

“And it is to be put into no one’s hands but mine, do you understand?”

He gave me a slow wink. “We are conspirators, memsa.”

“Exactly. And did you write down my chickens?”

Ryder raised a hand. “You refused before, but I would like you to have a welcome present.”

“Thank you. You’re such a wretched businessman I should refuse, but I think Fairlight owes quite enough just now.” To my surprise, Ryder laughed at the barb.

I made arrangements with Mr. Patel to have everything delivered and waved goodbye. When we emerged, I was surprised to find the shadows had grown long.

“Don’t worry. There’s plenty of time to get you home,” Ryder said. It was a little disconcerting how easily he read my thoughts. We walked along in silence for several minutes until he stopped and pointed at a tree. A bright yellow bird was busily constructing the most peculiar nest I had ever seen. It was shaped like a teardrop and hung from the branch like some exotic Christmas ornament.

“How beautiful,” I breathed.

“It’s a golden weaver bird. The male builds a nest for the female he admires to come and inspect. If she doesn’t like it, he tears it apart and builds a new one.”

“What if she doesn’t like the second one?”

“Then he builds another.”

“And if she doesn’t like that one?”

“He builds another. He will keep doing everything in his power to make her happy until she finally relents.”

Ryder was looking at me, but I kept my own gaze firmly fixed on the bird.

“It might be simpler if he gave up and found a female that was easier to please.”

“He isn’t interested in simple. He wants what he wants. No matter how much trouble she is and no matter whether he even understands it himself.”

He walked on then, leaving me to hurry along in his wake. He didn’t speak again until we reached the fringes of the garden at Fairlight. “I left the antelope with Pierre for dinner, but it’s only a small one. There isn’t enough to feed everybody in your house. Come home with me. I’ll feed you supper and bring you back afterwards.”

I should have said no. It would have been the wiser course. But then, I wasn’t any more interested in wise than Ryder was interested in simple. Besides, I was curious as to how he lived. He was a mass of contradictions, moody and thorny one minute, charming as the devil the next, and I wasn’t sure which of those men was the real Ryder White. One of Mossy’s altruisms was that a man can fool you in public, showing whichever face he likes, but his home doesn’t lie. His home tells more truth than his tongue ever will.

We walked to his boma through the deepening shadows, and just as we reached his little establishment, the sun gave one last brilliant shimmer of red-gold and sank away beneath the horizon. There was a purple-blue stillness that lasted for the space of a few minutes, and then rolled away under the gathering darkness.

Ryder took me in through the hedge of wait-a-bit thorn and into his mud-and-wattle rondavel. It was snug and small, but outfitted for most of the essential comforts. There was a tiny table with two chairs, a shelf for plates and cups and a single pot. A bottle of whisky rested there, single malt from an expensive distillery. He had a narrow bedspread with a colourful coverlet and a small trunk, which I presumed held the rest of his wardrobe. There wasn’t much, but what there was was good. Everything was of excellent quality, as if he’d chosen only the very best of the very fewest things a man could live with. He hefted his rifle to a gun rack over the door and set to work preparing the food. His cooking fire was outdoors and two acacia stumps served as seats. The air grew colder as the evening wore on, and he tossed me a blanket. It was a length of the stuff the Masai wore, bright scarlet and surprisingly soft. I wrapped it around myself and sipped at my whisky while I watched him.

Some men can’t do women’s work without looking foolish, but Ryder wasn’t one of them. I suppose it was because he was so fully masculine that even if he’d dressed up in a frilly apron and passed me a petit four, he still would have knocked down every man I’d ever met for sheer maleness. I think he knew I watched him. He seemed aware of everything I did whether his eyes were on me or not. I had no sooner taken the last sip of my drink than he poured another. I took it along with the plate of food he handed me. I was ravenous, and the stew, thick with meat and spices and squash, was delicious. There was flatbread to soak it up, and I ate like a field hand. We stayed outside to eat, enjoying the warmth of the fire, and I glanced up once in a while to watch it flicker over his face. He seemed entirely relaxed, like a big cat after it’s been fed and groomed and has nothing better to do than flick its tail as the world goes by.

I cleared my throat. “You are an exceptionally fine cook. I ought to offer you a job.”

He laughed. “I learned in the Yukon. Not many women in the camps there and I was too small to be much good at mining.”

“I can’t believe you were ever small,” I said, my lips twitching slightly.

“Don’t start flirting with me now. I won’t be accountable for my actions,” he said. His tone was light, but the cool blue of his eyes had warmed. Some men have a trick of looking right through you, as if your clothes were something to stop everybody but them from seeing into you. Ryder was one of them.

“I thought you said you would see me safely back to Fairlight.”

“And I will. Just as soon as you’ve finished eating.”

I felt an odd little stab of something like disappointment and a far sharper pang of annoyance. I wasn’t accustomed to indifference. I thought of slim Mrs. Patel and the pang turned sharper. I had expected a proper attempt at seduction, something overt and easy to rebuff, something that would give me a chance to put him firmly in his place and keep him there. But he wasn’t playing by the rules. Instead of rushing me, he’d merely left himself open, wanting me to do the work for him. It was a subtle strategy, and I had to give him high marks for it, no matter how grudgingly. He had baited the trap, but whether or not a willing woman fell into it was entirely up to her. If she didn’t, there was nothing to forgive, nothing to excuse. He’d merely offered dinner and conversation. But if she made a move to take him to bed, I had no doubt he’d rise to the challenge so fast she wouldn’t even have time to realise he was the one calling the shots. The beauty of this approach was that the average woman would never even recognise it as a deliberate seduction. She might even, given a little judicious manipulation, come to think of it as entirely her fault. But I wasn’t average—not by half, and it would be child’s play to push him past the limit of his control.

I put on my softest smile, the one that sat in my eyes and looked up through my lashes, inviting and coaxing and promising things I might or might not give.

“Weren’t you supposed to be trying to seduce me? I seem to recall you placed a bet regarding my virtue.”

He shrugged. “That’s a bet I’ve already lost. I knew I should have placed a side bet on Kit.” He shook his head and sighed. I felt my annoyance creeping higher.

“And it doesn’t bother you?”

“What? That you’ve slept with Kit Parrymore?” He threw back his head and laughed. “If I thought I would suffer in comparison to Kit, I would walk out into the bush and shoot myself for the vultures to eat.”

“Big talk,” I said flippantly.

He surged up then, pulling me with him. His hands were tight on my upper arms and his face half in shadow. I could feel the sheer power of him, like a force of nature, and I heard the blood beating swift and steady in my ears. My lips curved into a smile. Child’s play, indeed.

His hands bit into my flesh, hurting, and the pain felt good. That pain was power. It meant I had pushed him just that step too far and he was giving me what I had already given him. I parted my lips.

“Sin with me,” he murmured, lowering his head.

At the last second, I turned and his lips grazed my jaw, touching hard bone instead of the soft mouth he’d been looking for. He pulled back, confused, and the smile I gave him this time was for me alone.

“You didn’t really think it was going to be that easy, did you?”

He dropped his hands as quickly as if I’d burned him, and maybe I had. My blood was molten, and I could smell brimstone on my breath. He stepped back, putting the cool evening air between us.

“Didn’t anybody ever teach you it’s dangerous to play with fire?” His voice was hoarse and his hands were flexing, opening and closing on empty air instead of me.

I tilted my head, smiling. “You’re a real piece of work, Ryder White. You wager on my wreck of a reputation while you’re busy screwing half the women in Kenya, including poor Mr. Patel’s little jewel. Tell me, does he even suspect?”

“Probably not. Husbands can be remarkably shortsighted when they want to be.”

“Oh, that’s not unique to husbands. Now, we’re going to see quite a bit of each other while I’m here, so let’s get a few things straight. I do what I like with whomever I like, and I don’t give a tinker’s damn what anybody thinks about it. But I’m not just a carnival prize you win for putting your ball in the hole, and I’m nobody’s notch on a bedpost. I don’t belong to anybody but myself and I am never a sure thing. So, you keep your libido in check and stop sniffing around my skirts. Because it’s not going to happen.”

He folded his arms over his chest and stared at me. The firelight warmed the dark gold of his hair, reddening it as the shadows passed over his face and back again. Any other man would have apologised and smoothed the moment over, patting his dignity into place with soft hands and softer words. Not Ryder. He smiled slowly, and there was a flash of cruelty there, a flash he was happy to show me before he sat it down in the corner and made it behave.

“You understand that we’re alone out here, don’t you, Delilah? There’s not a soul within screaming distance, nobody to hear you, nobody to help you. I could violate you sixty different ways and throw you out for the hyenas to have their way with before anybody ever even noticed you were gone.”

The words were dangerous, but the voice was low and soft and coaxing, mixing me up until I wasn’t sure whether to believe his lips or his eyes. My pulse was coming hard and fast as he put out a hand and wrapped a lock of my hair around one finger. He pulled slowly until my head came forward. He didn’t lay a hand on me aside from that one finger, just that one finger, pulling me closer and closer until my mouth opened. I had had men use their whole bodies to seduce me, and their minds and fortunes, too, but never just one finger, coaxing me closer until that one finger was all I could think about. I felt his breath pass over my lips, felt the warmth of his mouth as he almost but not quite touched me, holding himself just out of reach. I leaned forward, thinking how much I’d like to pin his ears back with my knees.

“Have it your way, princess,” he said, whispering the words across my skin, raising gooseflesh as they passed. “We’ll see who caves first.”

With that he unwound his finger and stepped away. My legs were shaking as he went into the rondavel for his rifle.

I nearly choked on the words, but I managed to say brightly, “Thank you for your hospitality. Dinner was delicious.”

He didn’t respond. He merely led the way home, pausing only once when we heard a loud rasping noise, like someone sawing wood.

“Leopard,” he murmured, his lips annoyingly close to my ear. His chest was pressed to my back. There was a slow, deep rhythm beating behind it, and I stood still, feeling his heart drumming evenly. He wasn’t scared, and because he was there, neither was I. We stood very still until he felt it was safe to continue, and in a remarkably short time we were back at Fairlight. He left me in the garden.

I hesitated, one foot on the veranda. “Ryder,” I started, and only later was I glad he interrupted me. I never did figure out what I might have said to him.

“For Christ’s sake, woman. Don’t stand there mooning about. This is Africa. Go inside before something eats you.”

I went.