A Spear of Summer Grass

13



We reached Nyama at teatime, and I was surprised to see Kit happily devouring sandwiches.

“Delilah!” he called through a mouthful of crumbs. He rose and pressed a kiss to my cheek. Ryder shot us both a cool look then moved to sit next to our hostess. Jude was on his other side, sipping slowly at a cup of tea.

“Afternoon, Tusker,” Ryder said, helping himself to a plate. “Hope you don’t mind, but we’re after a lion. I need to collect my gear and I could use a few of your boys as bearers.”

She waved him to a chair. “Anytime. You know that.” She turned to me. “So, Miss Drummond. Your first lion hunt. I hope you won’t turn soft when the time comes to shoot. They’re beautiful monsters, lions, but monsters they are and don’t mistake it. They’ll just as soon tear you to pieces as look at you.”

I thought of the broken bits of flesh that had been carried into my garden on a blanket and pushed the sandwiches aside. Jude poured me a strong cup of tea and handed it over. “There’s whisky if you need a stiffener,” she said. Her voice was cool, but there was recognition in her eyes. She understood something of facing down new horrors, I realised.

“I’ve half a mind to go with you,” Tusker announced. “It’s been ages since I had a good break from this place. I’d like to feel the wind in my hair again and get out there.”

“Then pack up,” Ryder told her. “I want to leave tonight.”

She shook her head. “Not if you’re after the lion that ate the Kuke child at Fairlight. It’s been seen on the other side of the lugga at the edge of my property. The moon’s still a bit too dark to try that at night. Best to start first thing in the morning. Don’t worry, I’ll put you up tonight and give you a proper feed before we leave tomorrow. Jude can look after Nyama while I’m gone.”

To my surprise, Ryder agreed. He turned to Kit. “Coming with us, Parrymore?”

There was an unspoken challenge in his voice, and Kit must have heard it. He lifted his chin and smiled. “I don’t think so, old boy. I think the hunting is plenty good right here.”

He slanted Jude a mischievous look and she ignored him, as inscrutable as some Eastern goddess. She merely sat sipping at her tea while Ryder’s eyes narrowed at Kit.

“Watch your mouth, Kit. Do you think talk like that will do her any favours if Wickenden hears you?”

“I shouldn’t think that would bother you. If Anthony gets out of line, it will just give you an excuse to thrash him again. After all, everyone knows how much you like to play the hero.”

“Or I could just eliminate the problem at the source,” Ryder said, his voice soft with menace.

Kit hesitated, his sang-froid slipping slightly. Ryder saw it and smelled blood. He smiled, baring his teeth as he sat back in his chair. He folded his arms over his chest, the scars on his left arm chillingly apparent in the bright afternoon light. Kit’s eyes fell on them and he looked quickly away.

“Men are such children,” Tusker said to me. “Really, I’ve seen male lions mauling each other with more subtlety.”

Jude laughed suddenly, and I wasn’t sure at whom. “Come on, Kit. Say goodbye. You were just leaving.”

“Oh, was I?” But he obeyed. “Goodbye, all.” He paused at my chair and bent over me. He swept my hair away from my ear and pressed a kiss to the hollow just below it. “Be safe out there. Don’t let anything eat you that shouldn’t.”

He left laughing, and I lit a cigarette. Ryder made a short remark about checking his gear and stalked away, shoulders very square. Tusker sighed as she watched him go.

“Ryder’s a dear boy, but it’s rather like keeping a pet panther in the drawing room to have him around.”

“Do he and Kit always go at it?”

Tusker put her hands through her cropped grey hair. “Ryder puts most men’s backs right up. He doesn’t mean to, but look at the fellow. He’s like something out of a myth, covered in battle scars and women throwing themselves at him. It makes other men nervous. And he takes it all in his stride, the women wanting him and the men hating him. Nothing touches him, not really.”

“What happened to his arm?”

Tusker reached for the whisky. She poured a healthy shot into both of our cups. “Drink up, child. It’s almost cocktail hour anyway.”

She took a deep sip, closing her eyes as the whisky ran down her throat. “God, that’s good. We owe those bog-Irish a medal for that. What were we talking about? Oh, yes, Ryder’s arm. Leopard.”

“A leopard did that?”

She nodded. “He was guiding a Scandinavian prince—it wouldn’t do to say which one because the story does not reflect well on his people, but I can tell you he was a Dane. Anyway, they were stalking a black leopard that had killed several Masai cattle. It was the sort of hunt he’s led a hundred times without incident.”

“But not this time,” I prompted. I sipped at the whisky and raised a brow. Ryder apparently wasn’t the only one with a taste for single malt.

“This one was a brute, big and fast. Ryder tracked it for his prince, but the prince only winged it, a glancing shot on its flank, just enough to make it good and mad. It turned to charge at them and the prince stood there and pissed himself.”

“Good God.” I took another deep swallow. “Then what happened?”

“Ryder stepped in front of him. He only had time to get off a single shot, but the prince shouted and the cat turned, so the shot wasn’t true. It hit the leopard in the leg just before it landed on Ryder. He managed to get his left arm down its mouth and he held it with his right hand. It clawed and struggled, but it was the only chance Ryder had. If he’d let go, it would have killed him for certain. His only hope was to suffocate it. So he kept shoving that arm down its throat and squeezing with the other as it mauled him.”

I shoved the cup aside. The whisky was sour on my tongue. “How did it end?”

She shrugged. “The cat bled out or Ryder suffocated it, he never knew which. But they lay on that ground for almost half an hour, eye to eye, just staring at one another and waiting for one of them to die. He told me later it was the most spiritual experience of his entire life. He saw God in that leopard, and God let him live, Miss Drummond.”

I didn’t speak.

“He knows death and he knows God. Most men are too afraid to look either one in the face and he’s walked right up and shaken hands with them. It makes him special and it makes him stupid.”

I roused myself. “Stupid?”

She flapped a hand. “That business in the station with Anthony. He shouldn’t have whipped him, at least not publicly. It’s bad form for a white man to be lowered so much in the eyes of the Africans. Could cause trouble. There are far more of them than of us. If we start letting them lose respect for us, for any of us, it could have consequences.”

“Speaking of consequences, will he face any for assaulting Mr. Wickenden?”

She laughed, a deep belly laugh. “Child, the lieutenant governor told him off for doing it in public, but believe me, the government doesn’t care about family squabbles.”

“Family squabbles?”

She poured more whisky into my cup.

“Didn’t you know? Ryder is my nephew. Now finish your drink. My cook is appalling and dinner will be foul. Much better to be drunk by the time it’s served.”

I sipped at the whisky and thought of what Ryder had said to me that first afternoon, my assumption that he had been defending a paramour when he thrashed Anthony Wickenden. But Jude was his cousin, and I thought of his casual greeting to her when we’d arrived. I could smell attraction on a man. I knew what it meant when his eyes were hot, and I knew that it meant more when he never looked at a woman at all, keeping his need bound up and secret. Ryder and Jude had been perfectly comfortable with one another; they talked with the ease of siblings. But why had he been so needled by Kit’s presence?

I thought of Kit’s warm lips on the skin of my neck and I took another sip of my whisky. Tusker was watching me closely.

“I suppose you’re also going to tell me that he’s a good man and not to hurt him,” I said sharply.

She laughed again. “You couldn’t, Miss Drummond. To hurt a man you have to hit him in his heart and Ryder doesn’t have one. Oh, he can be kind, but he doesn’t really let anyone or anything in. You see, he was married once, years ago. And losing her changed him. He closed himself off. One can’t blame him, of course. It’s quite a common reaction. He thrashed Anthony as much for the family name as for hurting Jude. He’s loyal and he’s strong, and he’s put up a wall so high you can’t even see to the top of it. Take my advice and don’t even try.”

“Thanks for the warning,” I told her, arching a brow.

“I like you, Miss Drummond. In fact, I like you so much I’m going to call you Delilah.”

“By all means.”

“And I’m going to give you a piece of advice.”

“Oh, dear.”

She snorted. “Pay attention to your elders, child. We have the wisdom of the ages within us.”

“Very well. What advice do you have for me?”

“Don’t risk your happiness on a man with a stone for a heart.”

Her lip trembled for a moment, and I wondered about her own happiness. She seemed hugely content with her lot in life, mistress of a vast property in a beautiful wilderness, doing work that she loved. She ought to have been happy. But something softened her mouth, making it vulnerable.

I covered her hand with my own. “Don’t worry about me, Tusker. Ryder may have a stone heart, but mine’s diamond. And there’s nothing on earth harder than that.”

* * *

For all its spaciousness, Nyama lacked guest rooms. Ryder pitched a tent in the garden, Gideon slept underneath a tree, and I shared with Jude. Anthony had gone to Nairobi, and the evening was a pleasant one. Dinner was every bit as foul as Tusker had warned. I pushed gristly meat around my plate and drank a bottle of excellent red wine to fill in the empty spaces.

“Don’t worry,” Jude murmured as she passed me a bowl of grey peas, “her camp cook is the best in Kenya. You’ll eat well on safari at least.”

It was the longest comment she made the entire evening. She was full of cool reserve, and I was rather surprised when she offered to let me share her room so I didn’t have to sleep outside.

I thanked her and she shrugged. “Bath is that way if you want to go first. Just save me the water. I’m not fussy.”

I scrubbed up quickly and scrabbled in my bag for a fresh set of white silk underthings. Jude dressed herself in what I can only think must have been one of Tusker’s old nightdresses, voluminous pink flannel and worn nearly through.

I gave her a look as she climbed into bed with me and she shrugged again. “It’s comfortable.”

“It’s vile. You really ought to do something with yourself, you know. You’re quite the loveliest woman I’ve ever met but you dress like a farmhand.”

“I am a farmhand,” she said, giving me a lopsided smile.

I pulled out my nail buffer and began to polish my nails. “Have it your way. I never have any luck getting Dora to spiff herself up either.”

“I just don’t see the point.” Jude settled herself on her side, watching me buff. “I spend all day with horses.”

“And all night?” I asked pointedly.

She gave me a cool look. “Anthony doesn’t seem to mind the way I look. As he is so fond of saying, all cats are black in the dark.”

“I know it’s none of my business, but he’s a cad. You have to know that. Why do you stay with him?”

She laughed then, and there was something like pity in it. “Do you really think I’m any better? If he’s a cad, I’m a whore. We’re well-suited.”

“I’m not just talking about adultery, Jude. You’re both grown up. Whatever you get up to in other people’s beds is your own business. I mean the other.”

“The hitting?” She rolled onto her back and stretched. “I feel sorry for him sometimes. He just doesn’t know any other way to reach me.”

“He hits you and you feel sorry for him?”

“He loves me more than he’s ever loved anything in his entire life,” she said, relating the words in her cool, passionless voice. “All he wants is to touch me, to move something inside of me so that I will love him back. And I can’t. I give him silence and pity and sometimes it’s just too much for him. He hits because it’s the only way he can get a reaction out of me.”

“And bruises are better than kisses?”

“Something like that. Haven’t you ever seen a small boy trying to get his mother’s attention? He’ll tug at her skirts and call her name, and if she ignores him, he’ll just get louder and louder, poking and pinching until she sees him. That’s Tony’s problem. I can’t see him, and no matter what he does, he can’t make me.”

“Why hasn’t he tried to get back at Ryder for thrashing him in public?”

“Because he knows I’d kill him. That’s the difference between us,” she told me, her eyes wide and untroubled. “Tony gets mad and he goes hot, he lets it burn him up. My rage is cold, the sort that would poison his dinner or put a cobra in his bed and watch him die.”

“Would you kill him? Could you?”

“Probably not. But Tony thinks I can and that’s enough. He’s quite good company, really. He keeps me from thinking too much. And most of the time he’s happy he married me because it gives him something to work for, making me love him back.”

“If you don’t love him, why did you marry him?”

The silence between us was so heavy it took on its own form, like a third person in the room. Finally, she broke it, weighing her words like stones.

“I suppose it was because he loved me. And it had been a very long time since anybody looked at me like I was the most important thing in the world.”

“My husband died in the war, too,” I told her. I turned away and put aside my buffer. She blew out the lamp and we lay in the dark, watching the sliver of moonlit shadow move over the ceiling.

“My husband didn’t die in the war.” Jude’s voice was small in the darkness. “I think he’s still alive somewhere. Only he doesn’t know how to find his way home again.”

“I thought he had been declared dead.”

I felt her shoulders shrug into the mattress. “That’s the courts. Just because the law says it’s so, doesn’t make it true.”

“What if you were right? What if he did come home and he found you married to Tony?”

“I was his first,” she said dreamily. “I will always belong to him. That’s how I know he isn’t really dead. Tusker knew it, too. She used to go out searching for him, and when I had him declared dead and married Tony, she was furious with me. She still doesn’t talk to me if she can help it. I’m glad. When she’s silent, it makes it easier for me to be silent, too.”

I did not know what to say. Silence and sorrow mingled in that house, and I suddenly felt a thrust of pity for Anthony. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live with these two women who both pined for a ghost who might still be among the living.

“I shouldn’t have married Tony,” she went on. “I know that now. I was angry and tired and I had been waiting for so long. I just wanted to be loved again.”

She turned away, the mattress creaking under her, and I knew the conversation was over. She might have cried. I heard a brief snuffling, and then felt a shudder as she relaxed into sleep. I lay awake, watching for ghosts, but whether I expected to see hers or mine, I couldn’t have said. I thought about my Granny Miette and I wished she and Teenie and Angele had been there to cast a circle with black salt and holy water to keep the spirits at bay. I couldn’t remember the protective incantations she had taught me, and I didn’t have a gris-gris bag or a white candle. All I had was a prayer to Our Lady of Prompt Succour whispered into the darkness that shifted and sighed around me.

I slept deeply and late and by the time I awoke, breakfast was almost over and the garden was teeming with porters. Gideon pointed out the differences between the Kikuyu and Turkana and Swahili and Samburu.

“The Samburu are most like the Masai, and they, too, speak Maa, but they plant crops and this is unlike the Masai,” he explained. I could see the resemblance. Both tribes were tall and slender, although no one who had seen the two could reasonably mistake one for the other. The Masai might have been the poorest, but they carried themselves like kings.

He went on. “You see there, the fierceness of the Turkana? The rest of us carry the panga, but the knife of the Turkana is different.” What I had taken to be a peculiar sort of bracelet was in fact nothing of the sort. The Turkana bent blades to wear as bracelets, the sharp edge facing out and protected by a slim piece of leather. “The Turkana are quick to fight,” Gideon warned me. “And they bargain very hard. The Swahili come from the coast and are smaller men, but they carry heavy loads.”

Sixty pounds was the limit for each porter’s load by law, but a good headman would insist upon the porters carrying very near to it. Tusker had already explained that the porters would not respect a white hunter who paid well and expected too little. In return, they demanded two things: a leader who would stand his ground and who could shoot well. Failure in either respect could cause a fatal loss of respect among the men, and it was not unheard of for disenchanted bearers to simply walk away from a hunter they did not like, leaving him to make his way back—if he could find it.

“Of course, that won’t be an issue with Ryder. They fight like cats to be chosen,” she added, nodding toward the squabbling porters. Ryder waded into the fray and they stilled at once. He spoke quietly and within minutes had sorted out who would be coming and who would be left behind. He appointed a headman to keep the various porters in order, and I tilted my head toward Gideon.

“Why not him?”

Tusker shook her head. “The other tribes won’t stand for it. Ryder has tried, and even he’s found it to be more trouble than it’s worth. No, he’ll take Gideon as his personal guide and they will work together, but the headman will have to sort out the others, a full-time occupation, believe you me.”

“If it’s so difficult to keep the tribes in order, why not just choose them all from a single group?”

“Fatal,” she said flatly. “They band together and turn on the whites. There was a hunt went out a dozen years ago that took nothing but Kikuyu. There was some dispute over the payment. By the time the hunt was finished, the Kikuyu had taken the white hunter back to their village to stake him out and let every villager piss in his mouth. Since then folk have mostly mixed up their bearers. Damnation! Just realised I forgot the grouse paste,” she said. She lifted her voice to bark an order in Swahili and one of the porters hurried to retrieve the tins.

Tusker supervised the loading of the liquor and first aid supplies into the safari car, a battered old Ford that had been fitted for rough travel. The rest of the gear was portioned out for the bearers to carry, and Tusker ordered a cage of chickens to be lashed to the top of the car.

“Fresh eggs on safari,” she said, rubbing her hands together. “And if they won’t lay, chicken fricassee.”

She nodded to my guns. “Hope you’re prepared to use those.”

I lifted a brow. “It seems a bit much firepower for a single lion.”

She guffawed, thrusting her hands into her hair. It stood up in tufts over her head. “Silly child. We have to feed the porters. That’s the real reason Ryder let me come along. It’s damned hard to hunt a man-eater and feed the bearers as well. We’ll have to shoot enough game to keep them well fed. It’s the law, you know.”

“I didn’t, actually.”

She patted my arm. “Never mind. You’ll soon catch on. Mind you shoot what they like, though. A happy crew makes for a happy hunt, and if you give them eland more than two days running, you’ll have the lot of them ducking behind the leleshwa bushes to shit in a row. Fatty meat, eland is,” she advised me.

She walked away then, and Ryder appeared at my elbow. “Getting the lay of the land from Tusker?”

“She’s a unique character,” I said faintly.

“Not in Africa. But then Africa attracts all kinds.”

I followed him to where the cooking fire for breakfast had just fallen to grey ash. “She was telling me that I will be responsible to help feed the porters.”

He bent to scoop some ash, sieving it through his fingers into a small leather bag. “Yes, you will. Did she warn you about eland?”

“In graphic detail.”

“Well, she’s not wrong. Stick to antelope and you’ll be fine.”

He scooped another handful. “What are you doing?”

“Ash bag. It’s to help tell which way the wind is blowing when it’s too soft to move the grass.”

“If it’s too soft to move the grass, how do you know it’s blowing at all?”

“I don’t, but a lion will. If we’re on the wrong side of the wind, he’ll be gone before we ever see him or we’ll get the business end of his teeth.”

My gaze fell to his arm, the long white streaks of scar cording the brown muscle of his forearm. “Tusker told me,” I said, nodding toward his arm. “I can’t imagine living through something like that.”

He tied off the bag and straightened, dusting his hands. “No doubt she made it sound heroic.” He smiled. “Don’t be impressed, princess. Everybody out here has scars. Mine just happen to be on the outside.”

* * *

By the time the safari car was packed and the bearers loaded, the sun was riding high, casting short shadows over the grassy savannah. Ryder directed the hunt towards the lugga where Tusker said the lion had been seen. He had already visited the kill site to see the pug marks in the soft soil and talk to the Kikuyu. We were hunting a young male, large and fit and unpredictable, he had warned. He roamed the dry riverbed, scrutinizing the sign as Tusker and I kept a watchful eye out for leopards. The headman directed the porters to rest and Gideon took the other half of the lugga. After a lengthy consultation, they pointed us west, toward Lake Victoria and Uganda in the far distance.

We set off, Tusker driving the safari car and Ryder and Gideon walking. Some of the staff, including the cook whose duties exempted him from carrying anything, clung to the outside of the car as Tusker bounced them around the long plains. The others stretched out in a long line, singing songs in their various tongues as we wended our way westward.

I walked between Ryder and Gideon carrying my .22. The Rigby was far too much gun to carry for any length of time, but the .22 was manageable, although I noticed Ryder sending me sidelong glances to make sure I was holding up.

We came to the first river, a narrow crossing, but deep and tricky for the Ford. The porters came forward with sticks and rocks and began to hurl them into the water. The green water received them then suddenly began to heave like a pot coming to the boil. I saw a flash of teeth and tails as crocodiles thrashed their way out of the water and onto the sandy bank. They were hideous, like something prehistoric with their flat, dead eyes and their broad bodies. They ought to have been slow, but they weren’t. They hurled themselves awkwardly onto one another, fighting for space as they fled the water.

The headman kept a watchful eye on them as he waved Tusker forward. The car crossed, stately as a dowager, and behind her the porters hurried, each treading hard on the heels of the man in front. Gideon followed, and suddenly only Ryder and I were left. One of those scaly monsters opened his mouth and a small white bird hopped inside, pecking delicately at the morsels lodged between the monstrous teeth.

“Come on, princess. Before the crocs go back in and decide you look tasty.”

He took my hand and waded forward. I put one foot in front of the other, but my body moved of its own accord. My mind had pushed everything aside except those eyes, those hungry, waiting eyes that never blinked. If I had been alone, I would have stood there in the rushing green water and let them take me. But Ryder never let go, pulling me forward and keeping me so close to him that both of my hands were tucked under his and resting on his hips. We climbed out the other side and I pried my cold fingers from his.

“Thank you,” I murmured.

He smiled. “They’re just crocs. Not dangerous if you know what to do.”

“But I don’t know what to do,” I pointed out.

“That’s why you have me.”

He set a brisk pace after that, and I was glad. The speed and the golden light that spilled around us warmed me up. A small herd of zebra stopped grazing at our approach and lifted their noses. The porters began to sing again, and the miles unwound slowly behind as we walked. Ryder’s eyes kept to the middle distance, softly focused to show him where the ground might have been disturbed. He stopped from time to time to consult with Gideon and between them they kept the lion’s tracks before us. Sometimes the marks disappeared into the tall grass and we veered in a different direction, but always the lion had corrected back almost due west, taking us into the lengthening sun.

We stopped for a cold luncheon and began to walk again after the porters had rested. As we walked, Gideon raised his voice. “This is a thing that I know—Ryder knows the poems of Mr. Whitman.”

For a moment I thought Ryder was ignoring him, but then he spoke. “‘Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you, you must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, it comes to me as of a dream, I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you...’”

He went on, reciting the rest. I had read Whitman. Mossy had bought me a copy that my Granny Miette had promptly confiscated and burned upon my arrival in Louisiana on the grounds that it was indecent. But I hadn’t thought it indecent. Whitman was real; Whitman was passion. Whitman was aching and bruising and wanting and having. Reading him was like a long drink of cool water on a hot day at noon.

“‘I am to see to it that I do not lose you.’” Ryder finished. I did not have to look at him to know he had shifted his gaze. He wasn’t staring at the pug marks then or looking for ant-bear holes or stray snakes.

Gideon spoke first. “I do not remember this poem of Mr. Whitman’s. What is it called?”

“‘To a Stranger,’” I said quickly. I glanced at Ryder and his mouth curved into a slow smile.

“Familiar with it?”

“Yes.” I tried not to think of the words on his lips. Breast and beard and hands and body.

Gideon spoke again. “I think that I like best the ‘Song of Myself.’ Will you say this one, Bwana?”

Ryder turned back to the tracks cutting through the long grass and began to speak. We walked on, each step marked with a syllable of the poem, the words slipping gently into my ears, music for our journey. Some words passed quickly, but others, whole phrases, clung to my skin. “‘...every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you... I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass... A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms...’”

He continued on through the first five stanzas, each word a murmured invitation. There was enticement in that poetry, metaphors that passed from his lips to my ears as surely as any kisses. The poem had been written to shock, to strip away pretension and artifice, and leave nothing but naked souls behind. His voice caressed the words, not a practiced orator’s voice, but a man’s, low and rumbling gently over the African plains. Gideon walked solemnly, enjoying the poem as entertainment, but I shivered with each step, creeping closer as he dropped his voice lower with each stanza. It was seduction by poetry, and if we had been alone, I would have taken his hand and pulled him close, putting my mouth to his and drinking every word.

But we weren’t alone, and just as he finished the fifth stanza, he stopped, raising his hand. He turned, silhouetted starkly against the dying sun.

“We’ll make camp here,” he announced.

“But there’s an hour of daylight left,” I protested. My knees were shaking and my ears buzzing with the sudden stopping.

He took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. “We camp here,” he repeated. “The porters need time to set up the tents and start the cooking fires.” He slanted me a curious look. “What’s the matter, princess? Haven’t had enough yet?”

I didn’t answer him, and he didn’t seem to expect me to. He moved to stand in front of me. “Delilah,” he said softly.

I didn’t move away. “Yes?”

I looked into his eyes, wondering how they could possibly be so blue against the wide black pupils. He tipped his head down, then raised his hand, drawing one finger down my cheek. I shivered and leaned forward. He put his lips to my ear, grazing the curve as he spoke. “You need to go shoot some fresh meat.”

My head snapped up. “I beg your pardon?”

“The porters need to eat. I don’t waste my shooting permits on bush meat. Get going. Gideon will point you in the right direction.”

He crossed his arms and stood with his feet planted wide apart, a pirate Colossus, grinning at me. I swung around and stalked away, knowing he was watching me with every step.