A Spear of Summer Grass

16



The rest of that month brought surprises. The first was how much I grew to like Tusker Balfour. She appeared at Fairlight one morning covered in red dust from the road, pushing a bicycle with a flat tire.

“Had a puncture just beyond your gate,” she said by way of greeting. “Don’t suppose you’d run me back?”

“Of course. Ryder left me his pitiful excuse for a truck. We can throw your bicycle in the back. But you must have lunch first.”

She accepted so speedily I wondered if the puncture might have been a ruse to get inside the gate. She needn’t have bothered. The code of the African bush was the same as that of Creole hospitality. If a neighbour appeared, you fed and sheltered them and got them where they needed to be without question or mention of payment.

We sat down to a dish of curried chicken and rice and a few tasty accompaniments, including an orange sponge cake that Omar was ridiculously proud of. He had split it and filled it with custard, then sprinkled the whole thing with rosewater and presented it with a flourish. Tusker unashamedly ate three pieces.

“Damned fine cake. However much you’re paying that fellow, best double it if you don’t want Helen to lure him away. She’s the worst servant poacher hereabouts.”

“That doesn’t seem very neighbourly.”

Tusker shrugged. “That’s Helen. She’s all right, I suppose. Bit fluffy-headed, but no real harm in her.”

Faint praise, indeed. She went on. “Where’s that cousin of yours?”

“Dora? Off attempting a landscape of the countryside. She was so worn out after overhauling the house, I told her to start taking time to kick up her heels a little. For Dora that means a sketchbook and a new sponge cake recipe. She and Evelyn Halliwell have struck up a friendship based on art and gardens, I think. And Kit helps them with the rudiments of their work from time to time.”

She shook her head. “I have to wonder what you’re thinking.”

“I beg your pardon?”

She sat forward, her expression earnest. A tiny bit of custard clung to one lip, trembling a little as she spoke. “You have character, a backbone. Oh, it may wobble from time to time, but it’s there. Like my niece, Jude. You can do better than Kit Parrymore. He’s handsome, I’ll grant you that. But he’s soft inside. No spine of his own. You’ll end up carrying him, and it will break you. You’ll regret him.”

“Only if I’m stupid enough to rely on him,” I countered.

She gave a sharp yip of laughter. “Well, that’s a relief. At least you see him for what he is.”

“It would be difficult to see him for anything else. Kit isn’t like most men. He makes no secret of his shortcomings.”

“True enough.” She picked up a dish of pistachios and began to crack them idly. “For instance, did you read the piece in the latest issue of the Standard? There’s a juicy little item about the pair of you. All about how the centrepiece of his coming show is a painting he’s doing of you—a nude.”

“Is that right?” I lit a cigarette and blew a smoke ring while she played with her pistachios. Crack. Crack.

“It said the painting will be the latest in a long line of scandals for you. And then it proceeded to list them.”

“I’m surprised the good people of Nairobi have nothing better to read about than my little peccadilloes.”

“Kit said it would be the making of his career.”

I stopped halfway through blowing another smoke ring. It fluttered away like a stillborn angel. “Kit was quoted?”

“Lavishly.” Crack. Crack.

“Bastard,” I said softly. I stubbed out the cigarette. “Well, I shouldn’t have expected any different from him. In my experience, all artists would sell their own mothers for a bit of publicity.”

She yipped again and I respected her for not trying to say something consoling. I reached out with my napkin and wiped the custard off her mouth. “If you’re going to sit there cracking pistachios, at least eat them.”

She crunched a few and slipped the rest into her pocket. “For my new filly. Special treat.”

“How did you get the name Tusker?”

“When I was newly married, I went on safari with Balfour. I killed an elephant with one shot, and me not nineteen. It was the talk of the colony—or the protectorate, as it was then. I was even written up in the Standard for it. The governor himself sent me a letter of congratulation. But I didn’t realise the elephant was a mother. She had a calf that had got separated, and when I killed the mother, I orphaned the calf. I cried all the way home. Balfour had taken the tusks and I took the tail. The calf followed along, trailing the smell of its mother’s blood. Balfour said we ought to just shoot it, but I wouldn’t let him. I fed it and taught it to use its trunk and what plants to eat and how to scratch itself on a tree. I even shot a leopard that sprang at him and tried to take him when he went to drink. Years passed and that elephant followed me everywhere. He grew the most beautiful set of tusks you ever saw—a hundred and fifty pounds if they weighed an ounce. And when he was fully grown and ready to mate, I walked him out into the bush where he could live out his life with his own kind.”

“A sweet story,” I said.

She cracked another pistachio. “Oh, not so sweet. Hunter took him a month later for those tusks. Just carved them right out of his head and left him there. He died not a mile from my house. I think he might have been coming back to see me.” She ate the nut slowly. “That’s why I’m peculiar about ellies.”

“Peculiar?”

“Ask anybody. They’ll tell you I’m mad, but I’m not. It’s just that I can’t bear to see the tuskers hurt. They’re so big that people forget how gentle they are. And how much like us.”

“Elephants are like us?”

“More than most any other animal I’ve ever seen. They live in families, and when one dies, the others pay their respects. They grieve. I’ve seen them do it. And I’ve seen them keep on mourning for years afterwards. They’ll go miles out of their way just to pass a place where one of their own died, and their memories are always green. They are the gentlest creatures on earth if you know how to handle them. But that sentiment gets me into trouble.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“I’m banned from Government House, for starters,” she said with a mischievous grin. “I wanted the governor to sign a mandate creating a sanctuary for them and banning elephant hunting. Of course, he refused. So I took a leaf from the suffragettes’ book. Chained myself to his desk.”

“I don’t imagine that pleased him.”

“Not by half. It took them almost a day to find bolt cutters big enough to sever the chain. I looked like the world’s biggest paperweight.” She laughed at the memory. “Ryder understands. I think he’s the only one who does.”

“Odd that he would, since his livelihood depends upon hunting them.”

She snorted. “Ryder is tricky as the devil and twice as clever. He always manages to guide his clients to shooting problem animals that ought to be put down anyway— man-eaters or a cat that has taken to preying on Masai cattle or Kikuyu goats. He tells them a good yarn about how vicious the animal is and how everyone else is too frightened to track it. Then he and his boys guide them right to it and when the client shoots it, Ryder has the natives stage a big scene with dancing and a feast. The hunters are carried around like St. George after the dragon and everybody’s happy. The only one who pays is Ryder since he slips the natives something to cover the expense of the feast.”

“That is clever. I’m surprised the clients are quite that stupid.”

“They shoot animals for fun. They aren’t exactly the brightest stars in the firmament,” she said, cracking another nut. “No, they are no match for Ryder, but it won’t matter. He’ll get himself killed one of these days and the fun will be over.”

“By an animal?”

“Or some idiot with a gun. There’s a page on it in the betting book at the club. Quite a number of viable options. Could be a jealous husband or some criminal he’s horsewhipped. Could be a disgruntled client or a jilted woman. Or it could be his driving. He’s a trifle reckless. Of course, he has been known to walk right up to a lion, so I suppose that could always be a possibility. Then there are cobras and wildfires and epidemics and tribal rebellions and blackwater fever and envious guides and lightning on the savannah. It’s a dangerous place, our Africa—for man and beast.”

* * *

The days were surprisingly peaceful. Sometimes I walked out with Gideon to see the wildebeest moving in long dark shadows across the plains. Other days I simply lay on the sofa in the drawing room, smoking Sobranies and thinking. Dora had given up her art lessons with Kit and spent her time pottering about the gardens, working the soil from dawn to dark. I didn’t mind. There was a glumness to her that seemed to blunt the edge of whatever good mood I might have enjoyed. She had gone grey and dull, and when she retired early, I just turned up the gramophone and sang along without her.

And every morning I went to see Moses. I started checking on him soon after I came back from the lion hunt, and it wasn’t long before it became a habit. Each morning I finished breakfast and wrapped up several pieces of toast in a cloth. I walked out to the pasture, taking in deep breaths of cool, clean air. There was always the tang of woodsmoke and cow, good earthy country smells. And Moses would be waiting, lifting up his head and giving me a shy smile as I approached.

I shared the toast with him and he always wrapped up the last piece to save for later in the day. He took his meals at the back door of the kitchen, and I had warned Omar that he was never to be turned away if he asked for more. His favourite was toast dripping in honey.

One morning as we sat and watched the cattle grazing gently, a bird flitted by. It was a nondescript little bundle of grey-brown feathers. Only the white tips of its tail caught the eye as it dipped and rose on the wind, but Moses was excited. He tugged at my arm and dragged me to my feet. He hurried after the bird, beckoning me to follow.

We trotted quickly beyond the pasture and down into a lugga, and I cursed myself for not bringing along a rifle. Moses had only his cowherder’s stick for protection. But he plunged on, running now, and only occasionally checking to see if I was keeping up.

The bird flew out of the lugga and flashed its tail as it darted a little distance farther out on to the savannah. A single tree stood there, and the bird made straight for it. Moses was right behind, and when I finally joined him, breathing hard and sweating like a field hand, he pointed up, smiling happily.

The tree was a wild fig. Gideon had explained the brutality of the wild fig. It grew up around another tree, wrapping itself so closely that it suffocated its host. At first glance, a wild fig looked whole, but inside the host tree was rotten, and this one held within its decayed heart a honeycomb. Bees buzzed gently around us. Moses bent swiftly and gathered a handful of grasses. He fashioned these into a twist and motioned for me to give him matches. A moment later the makeshift torch was smoking hard, the green grass burning slowly. He moved cautiously forward, humming a song of his own making. The bees continued to circle, but none came close to him. He wedged the burning grass into a knothole of the tree and used his stick to break off a piece of honeycomb. He lifted it, dripping with golden honey and placed it carefully onto his saved piece of toast. When he was finished, he scraped a hole in the ground to bury his burned grass. He hummed another few bars of his song for the bees and turned to me, smiling his sweet smile.

We walked a little distance away so as not to disturb the bees, and he broke off pieces of the honeycomb to share with me. I sucked the honey from the beeswax. It was warm and thick on my tongue and I tasted the sharp edge of something green and herbal before it was submerged into the sweetness. Moses finished his honey and chewed the beeswax and I gave him mine to save for later. He laughed at the honey on my chin, and I thought about the mother that had given up on him and the father who had disowned him and I hated them both.

It was a slower walk back to the pasture. Moses was limping now, resting heavily on his stick, but determined to return to his herd. He took his cows very seriously, and when we reached the pasture, he was very proud to show me that one of the cows I had bought was carrying.

“Make sure she gets extra care,” I told him. “She’ll be the foundation of our herd.”

He smiled again and headed into the pasture to hum a special song to her, a song that would make her calf grow strong and her milk come sweet.

It was only after I walked away that I remembered I wouldn’t be staying long enough to see it born.

* * *

There were other walks with Moses after that, and long mornings spent listening to him sing his wordless songs to the cattle and telling stories to each other with our gestures and words scratched into the dirt with his cowherder’s stick. Sometimes Gideon joined us, and sometimes the three of us walked into the bush to see a baby giraffe or to gather honey for the table. Besides my outings with Gideon and Moses, Tusker called twice a week for lunch, Mr. Patel came to bring mail and packages, and I spent long hours on the veranda, nursing a drink and catching up on my reading.

I was falling into the African rhythm of life, a slow and steady pace that meant one day was sometimes very like the next until the seasons changed and brought an entirely new world. Tusker talked of the short rains that would come in November and the wild Christmas extravagances at the club in Nairobi. She talked of the growing tension between the settlers and the government, and she taught me much about the natives. She had a soft spot for the native girls, lamenting loudly the fact that so many of them were circumcised.

“Goodness knows I never had much going on in that way, what with marrying a poof, but a woman ought to at least have the option of getting her cork properly popped,” she said roundly.

“Of course they all justify it by claiming it stops the women from wandering off.”

“That’s absurd. It certainly didn’t stop adultery in Moses’ mother’s case.”

She shrugged. “Bush logic. You’ll get nowhere arguing the point. Jude has tried.”

“Jude disapproves as well?” I was intrigued. Tusker mentioned her niece occasionally, as if prodding a scar to test the tender flesh beneath.

“I should say so. She got into a flaming row one day with one of the tribal elders about it. They’ll come around in time, I’ve no doubt. That’s how it always happens. We civilize and educate them and teach them how to read and write and tie their shoes, and in the process we rob them of everything that makes them who they are. And we call ourselves saints for it.”

I said nothing. Tusker could warm to a theme, and one of her favourites was the role of whites in the colony. But she was contrary. I had seen her argue both sides of the coin just to spite her opponent. The truth was she cared, passionately, about the native tribes. She respected their wisdom and their ways. But she was still Englishwoman enough to rebel against the most savage of their customs. I pitied her a little. She wanted her illusions, but they had been stripped away long ago, and she saw the natives the same as she did everyone else: not as she wanted them to be, but as they were.

I raised the subject of circumcision with Gideon the next day. To my surprise, he did not seem embarrassed.

“It is tradition,” he said simply. “It has always been the Masai way.”

“It has not been the way of Masai to learn English. To read and write. And yet you do these things. You go to our schools, you take our medicine. Why not this?”

He held up a hand. “The elders did not understand this at first and they fought against changing our ways. But these changes are for the better.”

“It would be a good change not to mutilate your women.”

“Perhaps. And if that is so, then this change will come to us in time as well.”

“Do you really think so?”

He smiled. “Of course, Bibi. Adapt or die. It is the way of nature.”

I stared. “What did you just say?”

“Adapt or die. It is the essential principle of Mr. Darwin’s philosophy of natural selection. Surely you have heard of him.”

“Yes, I have. I’m just surprised the school taught you about Darwin. He isn’t precisely popular with the religious crowd.”

“Oh, the school did not teach Mr. Darwin. That was Bwana Tembo.”

“Ryder discusses Darwin with you?”

“Of course. He is well-read upon the subject, Bibi. The hours can be long out in the bush. To talk softly passes the time.”

“And Ryder talks about Darwin.” I shook my head. “That man surprises me even when he isn’t here.”

Gideon smiled again. “It is good to be surprised.”

“That it is, Gideon. That it is.”

* * *

After that, I threw myself into working on the farm. The pyrethrum crop was failing. The rainfall earlier in the year seemed to have established the plants, but the irrigation system that carried water from Lake Wanyama was insufficient. The plants were withering where they stood, and no matter how much I bullied, Gates merely shrugged and said that some crops were a dead loss and if they couldn’t be sustained by the trickle of lake water, they wouldn’t be hardy enough to last until harvest.

I read all of the farm books I could lay my hands on trying to discover a solution, but it wasn’t until we had been at Fairlight for some weeks that Dodo appeared during one of my morning clinics, flushed and agitated. It was a distinct improvement on her recent moods. The longer we stayed in Africa, the sulkier she became and she should have known better. Dora didn’t have a mouth made for pouting.

“Delilah, you must come and see this.”

I didn’t look up. I was extracting a jigger, a nasty little worm that liked to burrow underneath the toenail causing a painful infection. The only remedy was to extract it slowly, in tiny increments, otherwise it would simply break off and fester and the toe would turn necrotic. The Kikuyu farmhand was observing it all with quiet resignation. It was the fourth I had extracted from him and no matter how many times I tried to give him shoes, he refused. Of course, being African and innately courteous, he never refused outright. He took the shoes, thanked me profusely, then sold them as soon as he was out of sight of the house.

“In a minute, Dodo. I’m working a jigger.”

She crossed her arms and waited, saying nothing, but her foot tapped out an impatient rhythm as I worked.

I fished out the nasty creature and dropped it into a jar of kerosene. The Kikuyu smiled and nodded and I packed the gaping toenail with antiseptic powder and bound it up. I handed him the shoes with a firm look and he nodded, putting them on before he left this time.

“Thank God for that,” I muttered. I washed my hands and allowed Dodo to lead me towards the fields.

“Where are we going?”

“There’s another field I found. It’s part of the farm, but there’s a lugga that divides it from the rest of the estate.”

I stopped in my tracks.

“Dodo, we can’t cross the lugga without protection. And if you have been doing so, you’re even more witless than I thought.”

I returned to the house for the .416, checked it was loaded and tossed a pair of extra rounds in my pocket. It wasn’t the best choice for walking around. For starters, it was too damned heavy. But I couldn’t take the chance that a buffalo might surprise us in the lugga, and if there was one thing I had learned about the bush, it was better to be overarmed than under. When I rejoined Dodo, she was looking around furtively. In the distance some of the farmworkers were moving listlessly through the pyrethrum, picking off bugs and nipping the worst of the damaged leaves.

“Be discreet,” she murmured. I rolled my eyes, but I followed her as she slid through the tall grass. I kept an alert eye on the grasses, looking for any telltale disturbances that would indicate the presence of a big cat. The wind was circling then, and I reached down for a handful of dry red earth and tossed it up lightly. It carried away from the lugga, which made me feel marginally better. If anything were hunkered down there, it wouldn’t smell us on the wind. It wasn’t an ash bag, but it would do, and Dora seemed highly impressed with the trick.

I hefted the rifle as we approached the lugga, but nothing stirred. There was no acrid scent of lion or leopard. I had learned that the bigger cats smelled strongly of urine and blood, particularly if they’d recently marked or fed. It was possible to track them by scent alone although it took a gifted tracker to do it.

We moved swiftly across the lugga and emerged into the opening in a field. It was another of the sad pyrethrum fields and I turned to Dodo with a shrug.

“So? It’s another few acres of a poor crop that ought to be plowed under.”

“Look again.”

I moved into the field, pushing past the first several rows of pyrethrum, and straight into something quite different.

I turned back to Dodo. “You must be joking.”

“No. Cannabis sativa. Hundreds of plants. The pyrethrum is only the border, no doubt for camouflage.”

I walked farther into the field, pushing the plants apart with my hands. They were springy and green, and I wasn’t surprised to find extremely good irrigation equipment functioning perfectly.

“That bastard.” I turned and strode back to the main part of the farm. I think Dodo followed, but I never turned to look. A lion could have carried her off for all I cared. All I could think of was Gates.

I found him outside the barn, harassing Moses. He raised his hand and slapped the boy just as I rounded the corner.

I didn’t bother to call his name. I merely lifted the heavy rifle and shot the ground at his feet, blasting a hole into the dirt. Clots of red earth sprayed upwards. He jumped straight into the air and spun around.

“Are you out of your mind, you stupid bitch?” he demanded, his face flushing red. Spittle flew from his mouth when he spoke, and Moses stared from him to me with undisguised horror.

My shoulder was aching from the recoil, but I seated the butt of the gun again and sighted him. “Pack up. Take your ugly wife and your nasty children and get off this property.”

He took a single step in my direction and I fired again, this time just nicking his boot. “You’re barking mad!” Gates howled.

“Shut up. I didn’t even hit you. But I will the next time.” I reloaded and cocked the rifle yet again, but this time I aimed directly for his heart.

He curled his lip. “You think you can get away with killing me?”

“I don’t plan to kill you,” I said, dropping the barrel to his crotch.

He moved then, scurrying in the direction of his house. I glanced at Moses who was breathing hard.

I cocked my head. “Moses, get back to the cows. I will have a look at your head as soon as Mr. Gates is gone.”

He nodded and trotted back to his cows. Dodo rounded the corner then, holding a hand to her side. “Heavens, I’ve the most awful stitch. What is it? What’s happened?”

“I have given Mr. Gates his notice,” I informed her. “I just have to finish evicting him.”

I walked slowly toward his house and by the time I arrived, he was emerging with his wife and children and a pair of hastily packed cases. “I trust we can return for the rest of our things,” Gates said, his eyes icy as he faced me.

“You trust wrong.”

He moved toward me and I lifted the rifle meaningfully. He grabbed his wife hard by the arm and threw her into the car, shoving the children after. He left in a cloud of dust, his arm extended out the window in an obscene gesture. His son was offering me the same gesture in the rear window and I obliged by returning it.

“Delilah, really,” Dodo murmured.

“He started it.”

I turned on my heel and went straight to Moses. He had only a small cut on his head. I looked him over carefully, but he seemed fine, probably better than I was. My shoulder throbbed and I could barely lift my arm over my waist.

“Moses, was that the first time Mr. Gates hit you?”

He shook his head.

Wincing, I put both my hands on his shoulders and looked him squarely in the eye. “Moses, you work for me and no one else. Nobody, and I mean nobody, has the right to mistreat you. If anyone does, you come directly to me, do you hear? You are my responsibility, and I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

He ducked his head a moment then slipped a small beaded bracelet off his wrist. It was blue and white, like many I had seen in their village, worked in an intricate pattern with a slender and distinctive green stripe for contrast. It was primitive but somehow as elegant as anything I’d seen in Paris. He pressed it into my hand, and before I could say a word he had vanished. I slipped it onto my wrist, admiring the chic exoticism.

“He won’t thank you for that when you’re gone,” Dora said, her tone edged with something green and spiteful.

“Shut up, Dora. I’ve had my fill of you. You’ve been like this for ages now. If you hate Africa so much, go home. Nobody will miss you.”

She lifted her chin and for a moment I thought she was going to yell. I would have liked her better if she had. Instead she tucked her chin down again and withdrew into herself, a small dull wren with a wretched attitude.

“I’m sorry you think I’ve been difficult. But I’m not wrong. Not about that boy. Not about anything.”

And she turned on her heel and went to serve lunch.