A Spear of Summer Grass

15



We returned to the cheers of the men just as Tusker was returning with her bearer. He carried a reedbuck slung over his shoulders and in one hand he held the stomach, stuffed with the internal organs and sewn shut. The cook went to work and the porters brought water, filling a canvas bath in my tent. I cleaned myself first, scrubbing off dirt and sweat and blood, surprised to find that I didn’t look any different. I spread my fingers and stared at the clean skin and immaculate nails.

“No perfumes of Araby needed to clean this little hand,” I murmured.

“Talking to yourself? Ah, well, at least you’re assured of intelligent company,” Tusker put in. She thrust only her head and hand through the tent flap as she offered me a glass. “Champagne. It’s tradition.”

She vanished and I sipped at the champagne. It was marvelously cold, and when I joined them at the fireside for dinner, I told her so.

“It’s the wicker,” she said, nodding toward the narrow woven bottle covers. “We just put the bottles into them and sink the whole mess into a river or stream. Keeps the bubbly nice and cold. Let’s pop another cork, shall we?”

In fact, we popped three more and in the end only Tusker and Ryder and I were left at the fireside, each with our own bottle.

“Glad to see you ate a good dinner,” Tusker said, hiccupping gently. “Ryder thought you might have been upset at killing that lion. I walked over to see the body. The vultures had made a start but he was a big brute.”

“It had to be done,” I said faintly. I took another deep swig from the bottle and the bubbles tickled my nose.

“You did well,” Ryder said softly. He was sitting opposite me, the fire flickering between us. His eyes were warm.

“I must admit, Delilah, I did worry you might lack bottom,” Tusker put in. “I thought you might turn and run or at least make Ryder shoot the bloody thing. Glad to see you’re made of sterner stuff.”

“So I’ve been tested and found not wanting?” I said lightly.

“Something like that,” Tusker replied. Ryder said nothing, but his expression was unlike any I had seen on his face before. There was something marginally softer there, something almost vulnerable. “Women out here fall into two camps,” Tusker went on. “Those who are worth everything and those who are worth nothing. There is no in-between. And those who are worth everything are rare as hen’s teeth. You’ve got bottom,” she said, lifting her bottle.

I sipped again. Ryder was still watching me.

“I don’t know how much bottom I have,” I said slowly. “I didn’t want to pull that trigger. I still don’t want to.”

“That’s what makes you worth something,” Ryder said, his voice barely audible over the crackling of the flames. “You didn’t want to, and you did it anyway because it was a thing that had to be done.”

“I should have left it to you.”

“You couldn’t have. It was your battle, not mine. The lion made sure of that when he killed one of your Kikuyu.”

“They’re not my Kikuyu,” I returned, my voice sharper than it needed to be. Tusker upended her bottle, sucking the last of her champagne.

“The minute you set foot on Fairlight they became yours,” Ryder countered. “Whether you like it or not, they’re your responsibility. And you know it, or at least your bones and your blood do. Otherwise you never would have taken that lion yourself. You protected your own people because that’s what we do out here. You’re becoming one of us.”

“One of you?” I echoed. “Your sense of humour is better than I thought because that’s a damn good joke. I’m not one of you. I’ll never be one of you.”

“Of course you will,” Tusker put in, hiccupping again. “Just takes a bit of time, that’s all. By this time next year—”

“This time next year I won’t be here. I’m not staying. I was never supposed to stay. I’m here to serve out a sentence and nothing more. As soon as I make parole as far as my family is concerned, I’m taking the first steamer out of Mombasa.”

Tusker snorted. “You’ve already got a taste for Africa, child. You won’t be satisfied with anything less. Europe, America, even the Orient. They’re all pallid and bloodless, full of people who’ve had all the fire and spirit leached out of them. Is that what you want?”

“Yes,” I said coolly. “I want to wear silk shoes without getting them bloody. I want to eat without swallowing as much red dirt as I do food. I want to go to bed without worrying about ants or scorpions or snakes trying to have their way with me. And I want to be in a place where children don’t get chewed up just because somebody turned their back.”

Ryder said nothing as I spoke. He just took another long drag off of his bottle.

“Well, children, I’m turning in,” Tusker said, rising unsteadily to her feet. We said good-night to her and she lurched off toward the car.

“Will she be all right?”

Ryder gave me a half smile. “I’ve seen her take down an elly twice as drunk as she is now. She’ll be fine.”

We rose as well and Ryder put a hand to my shoulder. “Stay inside tonight, no matter what you hear. If that lioness decides to come sniffing around, it could be dangerous.”

“Fine,” I said. I turned to go, but before I had made it a dozen steps, Ryder was at my side.

“What the hell did I just tell you?”

“To stay put once I turned in. I haven’t turned in yet,” I pointed out reasonably.

His voice was harsh. “You saw what one of those things can do to a human. How damned stupid do you have to be to go wandering around?”

“I’m not wandering around. I just need a moment alone before I go into the tent,” I told him. “I drank a bottle and a half of champagne.”

“For Christ’s sake,” he muttered. He took me hard by the hand and dragged me into the bushes. “Go there.”

“I think not,” I said, folding my arms. I stood toe-to-toe with him, refusing to budge.

“Women,” he said finally. He circled around to a thick bush and struck it several times with the flat of his hand. An irritable porcupine wandered out, shooting him resentful glances as it waddled away.

Ryder indicated the bush with a flourish. “Behind there. I’ll wait here by the tree, until you finish. Then I will personally escort you to your tent and tie it closed. Deal?”

“Fine.” I did what I needed and hurried back. He was resting a shoulder against the tree, and when I approached, he didn’t move.

“Ryder?”

He pointed upwards, and I stood next to him, watching as the moon emerged from behind a narrow cloud. It was still weak, but it was enough to silver the whole of the African savannah, washing everything with cool light. In the distance I could hear the men still talking at their fires, their voices low and sleepy as they settled down for the night. Far in the distance I heard the lioness give a long, low howl and it sounded like mourning.

I looked up at Ryder to find him watching me. I put out my hand, running my fingers over the scars on his arm. He sucked in his breath sharply, but didn’t move. The night breeze stirred a little, rustling the leaves around us, and the air was thick with the sage scent of the leleshwa and the sharp green brightness of the tiny violets we had crushed underfoot.

I put the flat of my other hand against his chest. I stepped as close as I could, pressing myself to him, thigh to thigh, belly to belly, ready for him to make the next move.

I didn’t have long to wait. He grabbed both of my wrists and pushed me, slamming my back against the tree, pinning my arms high overhead. I was stretched taut as a bow. My legs shook and he shoved his thigh between them, holding me up.

I said his name and he lowered his head. Any other man would have kissed me. Ryder didn’t. He pushed himself hard against me, filling the space so that there was no me, no him, no tree, no separateness. He put his face close to mine, his nose at my temple. And then he inhaled, slowly, tracing his way down from my hairline. He circled my ear, lingering at my neck, and nuzzling a moment before moving lower. My arms ached and my thighs hurt and I wanted it to go on forever, until the end of the world burned us up into ash that would scatter on the wind over the savannah.

He buried his face between my breasts and then lifted his head again, still sniffing me like an animal. His hands were bruising my wrists, but I wanted them tighter. I pulled, and he growled, pressing me farther into the hardness of the tree behind. He wasn’t gentle or sweet or easy, and I wanted him so badly that the wanting was a thing apart, driving everything I did. I would have clawed off my own flesh to get rid of it, and I wanted him to know it.

His face was pressed to my neck and I turned my head, putting my mouth against his temple. He reared back as if I’d scalded him, then shoved his body even further against mine, punishing, stretching my arms further. “Yes,” I said, half sobbing.

He shook his head. “No.”

He let go of me then, releasing me so fast I slipped to the ground. My legs and arms were boneless, useless things. I sat hard, staring up at him.

He put out a hand, then quickly pulled it back as if touching me would scorch him. “Sorry, princess. I can’t take the chance.”

“What chance? You were willing enough before. What’s changed?”

“Everything. You’re leaving.”

“You knew that.” I put my hands flat against the dirt and pushed. I managed to stagger to my feet, dizzy and aching. I pulled a cigarette from its case and lit it, my hand shaking so badly that I dropped three matches before I managed to kindle a flame.

“I thought you might change your mind after you spent some time here.”

“Well, I won’t.” I took several long pulls off my cigarette before I spoke again. “You’re just full of surprises,” I said finally.

“Don’t make me talk about it. I can’t explain it.”

“No, I don’t think you can. I ought to be insulted. I don’t get turned down very often. But this isn’t about you not wanting me, is it? I’m a big girl, Ryder. I know when a man wants me. And I know you want me so badly right now it’s taking everything you have not to throw me down right here. You don’t even have to tell me I’m right. I can see your hands shaking. I know you’re hard for me.”

I had meant it as a jibe, but his face was serious. “You think it’s the first time? I’m used to this by now, Delilah. It takes nothing these days. The sound of your voice, the smell of your perfume. Hell, you don’t even have to be around. All I have to do is think about you and I’m so ready I could take this damn place apart rock by rock just to get to you.”

“Then why didn’t you do anything about it? You’re not the only one suffering, you know.”

“Don’t,” he ordered.

“That’s it? That’s all I get? You’ll let me get you good and ready, but then you won’t use it to repay the favour? Naughty, naughty, Ryder. Didn’t anyone ever teach you it’s not nice to be selfish?”

His hands were clenching and unclenching on his thighs. “I don’t hit women,” he said, half to himself.

“But you’d like to,” I went on, softly. “You’d like to put something into me, and if it isn’t going to be what we both want, why not your fist?”

I ground out my cigarette on my boot and stood close to him. I picked up his hand, that closed, fisted hand, and I opened it, coaxing the fingers to spread wide. His palm was open and flat, vulnerable, and I pressed my mouth into it, nipping lightly with my teeth.

He clapped his other hand to the back of my head, shoving it upward until he found my mouth. It wasn’t a kiss. It was an assault, and I hurt him right back, biting his lip. I tasted juniper and blood and I twisted my hands in his hair, pulling him closer.

I wasn’t surprised when he broke the kiss. He twisted away, and grabbed both my hands in his.

“Delilah,” he said, and there was pleading in his voice.

“It’s all right,” I told him. “I’m done. I won’t push it any more.”

He released my hands. I put one to the front of his trousers, cupping hard.

“I just wanted both of you to have something to think about when you’re lying awake tonight.”

I turned and walked back to my tent. I had had the last word. It wasn’t much consolation, but it would have to do.

Much later, long after the moon had set, I awoke, my heart slamming into my ribs. I sat up, straining my eyes, and could just make out a shadow beyond the flap of my tent. It did not move, but I heard a low, carrying howl. The sound came from some distance away, and I watched the still shadow crouching in front of my tent.

Over the howl came a series of unearthly cries, shrieks that could only mean one thing: the hyena had found the lion. I listened to them until I couldn’t stand it anymore. My hands were knotted in the sheets, and it took everything I had to unclench them. A line of sweat beaded my hairline as I heard them, snarling and snapping as they dismantled the body. It seemed to go on for hours, those maddening, horrifying sounds as they broke the lion apart, and all the while the shadow in front of my tent never moved.

I moved to swing my feet over the edge of my cot and the frame gave a tiny squeak of protest. The shadow shifted.

“I’m here, Delilah. Go back to sleep.”

I put my head back down to my pillow, but it was hours before I slept again. And all through that long night he stayed there, watching over me, saying nothing as he peered into the darkness that pressed against us like a living thing.

* * *

The journey back to Fairlight was uneventful. Tusker was nursing a modest hangover and the men were jubilant. They sang songs, filling the savannah sky with their chanting, and sparing the rest of us the burden of conversation. We cut directly across the countryside, saving a day and reaching Tusker’s ranch by teatime. I walked with Gideon and it was companionable, our silence, unlike the prickly thing that had sprung up between Ryder and me. He did not look at me, not until we had left Tusker at Nyama and he had taken me back to Fairlight. He unloaded my gear and stood, arms at his sides.

“I will have to arrange for your fee to be sent from Nairobi,” I began.

“Forget it,” he said, his mouth angry. “This one was on the house.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“I’m not kind and we both know it. I do what I want for my own reasons.”

“Fine. You’re not kind and I’m not grateful. Is there anything else?”

“Yes.” He pushed his hands through his hair. It was rough and unkempt, but it had felt like raw silk in my fingers. “I’m leaving. I’ll be gone at least a month. I’ve got a short safari to guide for a client coming out of Nairobi.”

“Safe journey, then.”

“Goddammit, Delilah—” He broke off. “Never mind. I’m leaving Gideon behind. He’ll keep an eye on you and on Fairlight.”

“I don’t need a nursemaid, Ryder. Not even yours.”

“No, but you could probably use a friend. He’ll know where to find me if you need me.”

Before I could say a word, he grabbed me by the back of the neck, kissing me hard. It was over as soon as he began, and when he released me he looked angrier still, as if kissing me had been something he had done entirely against his will.

“I know exactly how you feel,” I murmured. He stalked off without another word and I turned and went into Fairlight, now empty and small. But whether I was thinking of the house or myself, I couldn’t say.

* * *

After that, things settled into a routine. I spent my mornings patching up the Kikuyu and Masai at Fairlight while Gates hid his resentment and did what I told him for the most part. While I was away, Dodo had started a complete overhaul of the house from top to bottom. She had the house scrubbed, and hauled the carpets and curtains outside to the garden to be beaten. She set four boys with cricket bats to them, and the cloud of dust and insects they raised nearly choked us all. The floors were waxed and polished and the silver rubbed until it shone. Every window was cleaned with vinegar and sheets of newspaper, and when she was finished the house seemed lighter, shedding its coat of filth and neglect.

The kitchen was overhauled as well, and Pierre found a proper cook, an elegant Somali named Omar. He wouldn’t touch pork, but his skills made up for the lack of bacon at the table. Pierre was delighted with the changes and I presented him with a dashing new red fez to replace his old one. He even went so far as to serve dinner one evening wearing white gloves, but I told him it was a ridiculous affectation in Africa and he took them off. He sulked for a while, only perking up when I promised him a raise. Dora pursed her lips and looked disapproving, but she said nothing. She had worked her fingers to the bone on the house. The entire place shone like a new pin, and I told her so.

“Why, thank you,” she said, looking a little startled. “I have actually rather enjoyed it. Not all of it, mind you. There were days only stout British resolve got me through. But it looks rather lovely now, if I may say.”

“You may. The slipcovers you made for the drawing room were an inspired choice.”

She had ordered yards of a glazed black chintz with a pattern of falling autumn leaves and I had wiped out the rest of that quarter’s allowance from the Colonel to pay for it. The black kept it from feeling too feminine and the falling leaves somehow evoked the warm colours of the African landscape. She had broken half her nails on an elderly sewing machine she’d unearthed before she found that Mr. Patel could run up anything in half the time for pennies an hour. It was a useful discovery considering the fact that we had each managed to ruin most of the clothes we had come with. Insects, stray nails, thornbushes—all had taken their toll, and Dora had finally resorted to having Mr. Patel make half a dozen housecoats to put over her own clothes while she worked. I hadn’t bothered. I had gotten into the habit of wearing riding breeches and Misha’s shirts every day, my fashionable Paris frocks packed away in cedar and lavender until an evening entertainment or trip to town presented itself.

Aside from Kit, we had seen little of our neighbours. I made a point of walking over to visit him a few times a week for obvious reasons. He had decided to paint me, and after he fed me lunch and took me to bed, he would get up and stand in front of his easel, the sunlight warming his bare skin. He committed me to the canvas, first with a soft pencil, then with a palette and paints, frowning from the image to me and back again. He had positioned me sitting up against the headboard, the sheet draped carelessly at my waist, a cigarette dangling from my fingertips. I was at an oblique angle, something like La Grande Odalisque, so there was nothing objectionable on display, although I knew objections would be made in any event. I didn’t much care. Kit was a talented artist, and I quite liked the idea of hanging on some collector’s wall, or better yet, in a museum, naked for the world to see. I turned my face so that my gaze would be directed at whoever viewed the painting, and Kit gave a little shout of exultation.

“Perfect, my darling! Hold that expression. Chin down just a fraction—there. Don’t move. And whatever you’re thinking about, don’t stop. That expression is precisely what I want. It dares the viewer to look away. It will make them feel as if they are naked instead of you.”

I couldn’t wait to see it, but Kit was superstitious. He always made me dress and leave straight after so I couldn’t peek. He was excited about it, more than the lovemaking itself. Most days he rushed the sex to get to the painting, and I should have been a little miffed. But I always made sure I got what I came for, and if he didn’t, well, he had the painting to console him. He said it was going to be the centrepiece of the Nairobi show, and he chattered like a monkey while he worked. Most artists liked silence while they painted, but not Kit. He wanted to talk so long as I listened and didn’t move too much. He twittered on about how small the art world was and how one successful show anywhere would be his ticket back in. He talked about the contacts he still had in Paris and New York, and how the Berlin art scene was beginning to hop. He talked about Barcelona and Chicago and Rome, all of his hopes and ambitions.

He talked about people, too, mostly our neighbours, and he gave me a wicked look as he began to catalogue the women he’d had since he’d arrived in Africa. I wasn’t surprised he’d bedded Jude and Bianca, but the fact that he’d slept with Helen came as a bit of a shock.

“I would have thought her a little old for you,” I said, careful not to move my mouth too much.

He gave a short bark of laughter, like a hyena. “If Helen likes to put it about, who am I to stop her? The trouble is that Rex isn’t enough for her. Oh, it’s not his fault. She said he’s enormous and very skilled with it. But our Helen likes variety.”

“So she is a nymphomaniac. Poor Rex. Do you think he knows?”

“Oh, he knows. And between you and me, I think he’s almost proud of it in a strange way. Rex likes to have the best and most beautiful and Helen’s little adventures prove that other men want what he has. Besides, his driving passion is politics. He tolerates her lapses and she tolerates his ambitions. It seems to work fine for them. More than fine—they are not a couple I would want to come between.”

“Perhaps. It still seems a little sad.”

“Why? Don’t tell me the scandal of two continents believes in fidelity,” he said with a mocking twist of his mouth. Why had I never noticed how thin his lips could go?

“Three continents, actually. You forgot about that time in Buenos Aires. And yes, I do believe in fidelity. Not to you, of course,” I added with a malicious smile. “But I have always been faithful to my husbands until they either died on me or the marriage broke down. I have never deceived a man I promised to love until death.”

He said nothing for a minute. He was too busy painting furiously. Then he peered around the canvas. “I had a letter from my sister. She said the Paris gossip mills were working overtime when your Russian prince died. Word is you might have had a hand in it. Did you?”

“No,” I said slowly. “But he asked me to. He gave me his revolver. It belonged to the last tsar of Russia, you know. It was a beautiful little piece, but lethal enough. I just couldn’t pull the trigger. A better wife would have done it.” I thought of Ryder’s choice under the same circumstances. It was strange that we had something like that in common. It made a bond between us even though we had answered the call quite differently. He was stronger than I was. Or maybe he had just loved his father more than I had loved Misha. You had to love someone completely to be willing to destroy them.

The paintbrush clattered to the floor. “Jesus Christ.”

I took a deep drag off my cigarette. “Well, you did ask,” I said evenly. “That was the last time I saw him. I put the gun to his head and my hand was shaking. And I thought of how many times I had stroked that hair and brushed it and clutched it as I screamed his name. And I couldn’t make myself squeeze the trigger. I walked out and left him there, knowing he wanted to die and that I didn’t love him quite enough to help him do it.”

He didn’t attempt to retrieve his brush. He just stood there and stared at me as I talked.

“Why did he want you to do that? Was he that upset about the divorce?”

I laughed, but it didn’t sound like a laugh. It sounded like a sob, something dry and brittle rattling between the bones. “I’ve never broken any man’s heart badly enough to kill him, Kit. He had cancer, the painful, sly kind, wedged down deep in his bones. There was nothing the doctors could do. He wanted to go out on his own terms before things got worse. He had been shooting himself with morphine, but it had gotten so bad that it was barely knocking the edge off the pain. It was time.”

“What happened after you left?”

I shrugged. “Misha found the courage I had misplaced. He put the gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger and ruined a yard of expensive wallpaper at the Ritz. They billed me for it, the bastards.”

Kit put down his palette and walked slowly to the bed. “I don’t even know how you live with a story like that.”

“Easy. Like every bad thing that’s ever happened to me, I lock it up and don’t think about it. And once in a while someone asks, and I take my pain out and pass it around for other people to look at. It’s like a glass eye or a wooden leg. It shocks them and it gives me a gruesome little thrill to inflict it on the unsuspecting.”

He shook his head. “You have always been dazzling—the life of every party, the glamour girl who dances until dawn.”

“Well, I am. But I’m dancing on broken glass. I’m Miss Havisham’s wedding cake, Kit. A frothy, expensive, mice-eaten confection. I’m the Sphinx’s nose, the fallen Colossus. I’m a beautiful ruin, and it’s time that has done the deed.”

To my astonishment, he reached out and held me then, and after a moment I let him.

He put a finger to the black ribbon at my wrist. “I’ve always wondered what you’re hiding. Makes you even more mysterious, you know.”

“What do you think is under there?”

He gave me a devilish smile. “I think it’s a tattoo from where you were marked with Creole voodoo as a child. Or were you branded for thievery, like Milady de Winter?”

“You’ve read too many Gothic novels. It’s just a ribbon, Kit.”

“I like my version better. More interesting,” he said, closing his eyes and pulling me nearer. I relaxed against him and almost let myself go.

That’s the danger of locking away your pain. It makes it hard to be human again, to let someone hold you just for the sake of being close. And before things got too comfortable between us, I slipped my hand between his legs and he forgot about consolation. Instead he thrusted and grunted and when it was done, he rolled over and fell asleep almost instantly. I sat up in the sticky sheets and smoked another cigarette. I had almost let down my guard with Kit. He was wild and creative and unpredictable. But there was another side to him as well, an unexpected sweetness that was dangerous. He was fickle as the wind, unreliable as spring sunshine. It would never do to invest my hopes in him. There was no bedrock in Kit to build on. I couldn’t let myself get too fond of him. I dressed quietly and slipped away.