A Spear of Summer Grass

9



Helen screamed when we arrived, throwing her hands into the air and rushing out to meet us. I wasn’t even fully out of the car before she wrapped her arms around me and crushed me to her. It was a painful experience. Helen always was bony as a brook trout.

“Darling, you could have knocked me down with a feather when Mossy cabled to say you were coming—the veriest feather!” she said in her breathy, little-girl voice. I noticed her years of living with Rex had smoothed out her Midwestern accent to something that wasn’t quite on English street but at least knew the neighbourhood. “Come right in and have a drink and meet the others.”

She merely waved as I introduced her to Dodo, but Dora was accustomed to being an afterthought. Rex very correctly engaged her in polite conversation about the weather while Helen monopolized me.

She pushed a drink into my hands and towed me to the centre of the room. Clapping her hands for silence, she threw an arm around my shoulders.

“My darlings, this is why we have all gathered here tonight, to welcome dear Delilah. Her mother is one of my very oldest friends.” She placed heavy emphasis on the word oldest so everyone would understand that Helen was in no way ancient enough to be my mother. “She’s come to join our merry band, so you must all make her feel quite welcome.”

The guests raised their glasses and Helen sketched a little bow, somehow making my moment almost entirely about herself. It was a quintessentially Helen performance. She was a classic upstager, always seeking the spotlight even if she had to swipe it from someone else. But I hadn’t grown up Mossy’s child for nothing. I stood perfectly still, making certain I was positioned so the warm glow of the lamps would illuminate me, a figure in unrelieved white except for the crimson mouth and the sharp black ribbon to match my bob. I was creating an art study with myself as the subject, a chiaroscuro self-portrait that demanded nothing more than to be looked at. With her bright blue silk and unruly blond curls, Helen didn’t have a prayer. I moved my eyes slowly around the room, resting them for just a moment upon each face, caressing, inviting, but so coolly they might have imagined it.

Within seconds the men had all detached themselves and lined up for introductions. Helen looked a trifle put out, but she linked arms with me, probably in the spirit of “if you can’t beat them, join them.” She smiled warmly at the first comer.

“This is our resident medical man, Bunny Stevenson, a brilliant doctor and thoroughly lovely man. No, don’t blush, Bunny darling, it’s entirely true.”

He was about Rex’s age, but not wearing it quite so well. Whereas Rex’s laugh lines and silver hair were nicely balanced by a hard body and sinuous grace, the doctor was slightly inclined to embonpoint. A beard camouflaged what I suspected might be a softly doubled chin, but his handshake was warm and firm.

After him came a gentleman in a kilt accompanied by a woman in a dingy white gown pinned with a tartan sash. “Our local missionaries,” Helen said with a trifle less warmth than she had shown for the doctor. “Lawrence Halliwell and his good sister, Evelyn.” I shook hands with them both and forgot them almost immediately. I had little use for missionaries, particularly the ones who took on mission trips to godforsaken places and then dressed up for dinner parties. It whiffed of hypocrisy.

Following them was a lugubrious figure I recognised instantly. “Gervase, how nice to see you again. And Bianca, how brave you are to wear so much scarlet. I would never have the nerve.” Gervase Pemberton, the grim poet, and his tawdry Spanish wife. The comment on her cheap red silk dress was unkind, but she had behaved very badly at the last party I had invited them to in Paris. She had disappeared to the powder room and emerged wearing nothing but a string of pearls down to her nethers. I was no prude; I believed in having fun as much as the next girl, but giving away the farm to every Tom, Dick and Harry in the room was just common.

Kit Parrymore was next, and beside me Helen purred a little. “Kit, you naughty monkey. I think you’ve already welcomed Delilah quite thoroughly to Africa.”

He leaned near and brushed a kiss to my ear. “How word does travel,” I murmured.

“It’s the natives,” he whispered back. “They know everything and they tell it all.”

“I’ll remember that.” I gave him a demure look and he stepped back to let another fellow through. This one was sporting a face full of fresh bruises and some rather impressive cuts.

Anthony Wickenden held my hand a moment too long. “I must apologise for bleeding on your shoes in Nairobi. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is my wife, Jude.”

He drew forward a woman who might have been the loveliest creature I had ever seen if she’d given a damn. She would have done any showroom in Paris proud, and I could imagine her dressed in the latest fashion, leaning on the arm of a duke as she swept into the opera house. But instead she was here, in a colonial backwater, and the closer I looked, the more provincial she seemed. Her hair was badly cut and styled even worse. It had been crammed hastily into a snood and she was wearing an evening gown that looked as if it had come out of the closet of a plump octogenarian and altered badly. A moment later, I realised why.

Behind her was her aunt, presented as Sybil Balfour. “Call me Tusker,” she ordered, thrusting out her meaty hand. She was wearing a gown very similar in cut to Jude’s, only this one was straining at the seams. Jude’s had been awkwardly taken in and it hung badly on her tall, slender frame. Tusker was half a foot shorter and almost twice as wide, although her bulk seemed to be entirely muscle and when she shook my hand I would swear I heard the bones crack. “Welcome to Africa.”

“Thank you so much,” I said to her, and then to the company at large, “Thank you all for such a warm welcome.”

Helen beamed at us, then at Rex’s gentle cough, remembered to introduce Dora as well. We nibbled on tiny hot sausages and made small talk as Rex handed around fresh drinks.

“What’s this?” It was a champagne glass, but the liquid inside was foaming instead of bubbling. I peered at the murky colour.

“That is a Black Velvet, champagne with stout. Not a very pretty cocktail, I admit.”

“It looks like somebody tried to bottle evil.” But I had drunk worse. I took a sip and rolled it on my tongue. It was creamy and heavy and musky. “Not bad.”

He gave me a wink and moved on.

As soon as we’d finished our drinks, Helen whisked everyone into the dining room. “Now, I realise we’re odd numbers—only six men for seven women, so one of you gentlemen will have to take on two ladies,” she said with a waggish expression.

“Thirteen at table,” Bianca said darkly.

“Don’t be absurd, Bianca. That’s a peasant superstition,” Helen returned sharply. Meanwhile, Rex had solved the problem quite neatly by offering an arm each to Dora and to me and making it seem as if we were doing him a tremendous favour.

The table was set as beautifully as any in England—in fact, the entire house might have been spirited over by fairies, and I placed myself firmly in Helen’s good graces by telling her so.

“Oh, you are sweet!” she said breathily. “I designed it, you know. Well, I helped Rex. He’s so clever,” she added with a coo down the table in his direction. “We shopped for months in Paris and London to get just the right furnishings. Wait until you see my bathtub—pink quartz! So audacious it was even featured in Tatler. Of course, it took ages to have it all shipped over, but it is absolutely my dream house, right to the last detail.” She promised to give us a tour later, and then dinner was served.

The food was good and the wine impeccable, but something seemed slightly off with the company. There were undercurrents of tension I didn’t quite understand. In any close group of people there are bound to be secret resentments, and this group was closer than most. With the exception of Ryder and a few farming families, they represented the whole of white society in the little valley. There would be unspoken alliances in such a gathering, and doubtless unspoken annoyances as well.

But little things could fester in the African heat, and I wondered if any small thorn prick had been left to turn septic. I watched Bianca’s small dark eyes following Gervase with a feverish intensity. When she touched him, there was ownership in those caresses. I also saw Jude and her aunt Sybil work hard not to exchange a single word the entire evening. I was only a little surprised Jude was still living with her husband after he had beaten her. I had known my share of women mistreated by their men. But they were all tormented creatures, with eyes like caged animals and a tightly wound intensity that burned them inside. Jude was different, cool as a mountain lake, and I suspected she stayed with Wickenden because his beatings couldn’t really touch her. Perhaps that was why he beat her. Some men can only stand to be ignored for so long before they have to do something about it.

The soup was handed around by native servants wearing red fezzes and long white robes. They gave us little cups of consommé, and I dipped in my spoon, sighing in pleasure as I tasted it.

“The secret is eggshells,” Helen told me. “That’s how you clarify it. I’ll give you the recipe for your cook.”

Dora snickered into her soup, but I thanked Helen politely. Talk then turned to kitchen help and servants in general and how difficult it was to put together a competent staff.

“Of course, the language problem always gets in the way,” Helen said. “I can spend an entire morning trying to make them understand exactly what I want and end up with nothing more than a headache for my pains!”

“Why don’t you learn some of their language?” I asked.

The table went quiet for a moment, then erupted in laughter.

“You are optimistic, Miss Drummond,” the missionary Halliwell put in, not unkindly. “In any given household, there may be a Somali or Egyptian who speaks French or Arabic, a number of local tribesmen who speak their own languages, and some coastal folk who speak Swahili. Is a householder expected to learn all of these tongues just to be master of his own home? Far better for them to learn a little English, don’t you think?”

His argument wasn’t unreasonable, but it put my back up just the same. Before I could respond, Gervase looked up from the plate of duck that had been put in front of him.

“Typical clergyman,” he said lightly. “Would it suit you best if they were all speaking Latin and begging for the Host?”

Mr. Halliwell’s gentle expression did not falter. “Not at all. I accept that not all of them will be saved, but I live in hope, Gervase. As I live in hope that you, too, will come into the fold.”

Gervase rolled his eyes toward me. “Lawrence cannot bear having an atheist in the herd.”

“On the contrary,” Halliwell returned quietly. “I consider you to be a testimony to God’s faith that whatever questions you might raise, I am sufficient to answer.”

Bianca’s eyes flashed. “He does not require your answers.”

“Now really, Bianca,” Miss Halliwell said, putting her fork down. “There’s no call to be rude just because Lawrence is doing his job.”

“His job?” Bianca’s upper lip curled a bit. She wasn’t a particularly attractive woman, but she did scorn well.

“Yes, his job,” Miss Halliwell said firmly. “And furthermore—”

“Oh, will the lot of you shut up before you give me indigestion?” Sybil Balfour spoke up sharply. She reached down under the table and pulled out a tiffin box which she proceeded to fill with the contents of her dinner plate.

“Sybil, darling, you do a better job at hostessing my parties than I do!” Helen said, almost sincerely. She looked to me. “Sybil has a frightful cook. He prepares everything out of tins and even then he’s a menace. How many times has he poisoned you now, Sybil?”

“Seven,” the older woman put in promptly. She motioned to the doctor who reluctantly gave up half of his portion of duck for her tiffin box.

“If he’s so awful, why do you keep him?” I asked.

Sybil shrugged. “Obligation. I saved his life once. Nasty business with a snake. Anyway, he believes he’s indebted to me and won’t leave. He thinks he’s a fine cook, and I haven’t the heart to tell him otherwise. If it weren’t for the leftovers from Helen’s dinner parties, I’d never get a decent meal at Nyama.”

I passed her my dinner roll for her tiffin box and she gave me a gruff nod.

Dessert was a fig gratin, and with it came small glasses of Sauternes, the pale gold wine gleaming under the soft lights.

“Château d’Yquem,” Helen said. “I ordered it when I thought Ryder might be coming, but he begged off. Always out adventuring, we never know if he’ll turn up or not. He sends his regards to everyone.”

If anyone thought it strange that Ryder and Wickenden should be expected to meet socially so soon after the railway station thrashing, no one said a word. Wickenden went on quietly consuming his food, chewing quite slowly, perhaps because of the molar Ryder had knocked out. Only Sybil showed a reaction, a tiny smile she could not quite suppress. Jude looked as remote as ever, and I wondered if she was even grateful to Ryder for what he had done.

“Probably out with the Kukes again,” the doctor put in.

I looked up and Rex smiled at me. “Ryder is famous in these parts for his devotion to the native tribes. Although I think you’ve got it wrong there, Bunny. He’s a Masai man, through and through.”

The doctor shrugged. “As if one needed to know the difference.”

“I’m surprised anyone could confuse them,” I offered. “There are Kikuyu and Masai both at Fairlight and they don’t look at all alike, not really.” The Kikuyu were shorter, with rounder faces and limbs for the most part, while Gideon was tall and slender, his muscles long, his face fine-boned.

“Perhaps not,” the doctor conceded, “but they are all troublesome devils.”

I glanced about the table to find mixed reactions—boredom from the women, studied nonchalance from the men and a glimmer of warning from Dora not to start trouble. Kit alone was watching me with something like amused anticipation. It was the same expression I’d seen on my grandfather before he headed out to watch a cockfight.

“If they’re troublesome perhaps it’s because white people brought the trouble to them.”

Mr. Halliwell put down his fork. “An excellent point, Miss Drummond. Certainly the arrival of whites in the colony has changed the balance of power. But there were always conflicts, always warfare and bloodshed amongst these people. Why, even during our Great War, the Masai and the Bantu fought a vicious war that is still talked about. It is our duty to show them another way.”

“Bloody nonsense,” the doctor said, raising his glass to drink deeply. It was his fourth and the more he drank the more his hands shook. I made a mental note to stay healthy while I was in Africa. There was no way I wanted those plump trembling hands anywhere near me. “They’ve no understanding and no capacity for understanding. The kindest thing is to keep them in a place where they can be watched over by those who know best and left to sort out their own troubles.” He turned to me with a sly look. “I think you Americans had the right idea putting your natives onto reservations. It’s worked out well enough for you lot, hasn’t it?”

I ignored him and directed my attention to our host. “You’ve been here the longest, Rex. Do you agree that we have a moral duty to civilize the natives? Or do you think they ought to be pushed onto reservations?” I asked.

He paused and when he spoke, his answer was thoughtfully crafted. “I think the question of duty is one for men in comfortable London meeting rooms to debate. Out here there is only the truth.”

“And what is the truth?” I persisted.

“That Africa is a hard place, a very hard place. But it is full of promise, a land of such immense beauty and possibility that every man is a new Adam. Those who have lived here for centuries have lived simply, too simply. The land is not managed, and because of this, disease and animals take their toll upon the population and poverty runs rampant. We can fix that and we must if the whites are to thrive here. We are the builders of empire, my dear. We bring roads and schools, medicine and good food. We have the power to save the lives of children and, if we’re lucky, to put a few pounds in the bank against a rainy day. We can make a better life for everyone in Africa, and we need not choose to be either saints or devils to do it,” he added, looking from the doctor to the missionary. “We are but men, the sons of Seth, inheritors of this vast new Eden, this little paradise.”

It reeked of Shakespeare, but it was a good speech altogether. The doctor raised his glass high and shouted, “The sons of Seth!” slurring only slightly on the s’s.

Everyone else joined in the toast, and when it was drunk, Helen waggled a flirtatious finger at her husband. “And don’t you leave us out, Rex. It’s not just the men who will make over Africa. We women have a role to play, too.”

“Of course you do, my darling,” he said with a fond smile. “For without the inspiration of woman, what man has ever accomplished anything?”

She simpered at this piece of gallantry and in the wake of it, I turned to Rex again.

“Speaking of the role of women, I’d like to buy a milk cow.”

He raised his brows. “Fancy starting your own dairy herd? Do you know anything about cattle?”

I shrugged. “What’s to learn? They all have four legs and give milk and when they don’t you can shoot them and eat them for dinner.”

Bianca gave a little scream and covered her mouth with her hands, but Jude Wickenden laughed aloud, the first sound I had heard out of her all evening.

Rex smiled, his laugh lines creasing handsomely. “Dairy cattle take quite a bit more attention than beef cattle. I have an excellent book on starting a dairy herd if you’re interested, although I’d be more than happy to sell you as much milk as you could possibly need for your little household.”

“Oh, it isn’t for us. It’s for the Kikuyu labourers.”

The room went silent. Even the music from the gramophone seemed suddenly softer. Everyone’s eyes fixed on me, and I could have guessed what they were thinking. Only the doctor dared say it aloud.

“You’ll spoil those devils if you give them milk. They can get their own and if they can’t, well, it’s nature’s way, isn’t it? Culling the herd.”

Rex ignored him. “In that case you’d be better off with a few head of native cattle. They’ll be more resistant to disease and the locals will like the milk better. It has a more pungent taste than what our European dairy cattle give. Take my advice and get a boy to tend them as well, preferably a Masai. I can arrange it with one of the natives if you like.”

I don’t know what made me resist. It would have been simpler just to leave it in Rex’s hands. But before I could do the easy thing, my mouth interrupted. “Thank you, but I think I’ll try it on my own first.”

Anthony Wickenden snorted into his glass, and Sybil Balfour shot him an evil look.

“Glad to hear it,” she boomed at me from her end of the table. “Too many women come out here and forget they’ve got brains of their own.” She looked from Bianca to Helen, and the latter gave a bright peal of laughter.

“Guilty as charged, Sybil. I don’t do anything but set a nice table and make sure the guest room is made up for travellers.”

“I know precisely what you do,” Sybil shot back, and I saw that Rex was watching them both closely.

“I am practicing my hostessing for when I’m first lady of Kenya,” Helen said, wrinkling her nose at Sybil.

I looked at Rex. “Do you have aspirations to be governor?”

“Governor!” It was Anthony Wickenden, talking with a little difficulty through his swollen lips. They seemed to have stiffened up during the meal. “He means to be president.”

I looked curiously at her, but Rex merely waved a hand. “Helen, I think it’s time to cut Anthony off,” he said with a twinkle. He turned to me. “Our great hope is that London will extend to Kenya the same status it has conferred upon Rhodesia—that of a free nation.”

“I heard some talk about that as I was coming in. Isn’t that why Governor Kendall is in England right now?”

Rex nodded. “Yes, pleading our case before the Parliamentary committee. We are every bit as educated and devoted to Africa as the landowners in Rhodesia, and we fought just as hard in the Great War to support the mother country. We deserve our shot at self-determination.”

“It sounds like a reasonable enough request. Will they grant it?”

“They are politicians,” Gervase said bitterly. “When were politicians ever reasonable?”

Rex was more generous. “Now, Gervase, that isn’t entirely fair. They listened to the Rhodesians and they responded. We can only hope they do the same for us.”

“They might if it weren’t for the bloody Indians,” the doctor interjected.

Yet again I ignored him and turned to Rex as he explained. “What the doctor means is that during the Great War, India supported England, as you must know.” He hesitated, touching only lightly on my own involvement in that terrible time. “There are a great many Indians here, running shops, building railways. They are almost all merchants or labourers. But they want to own land, and under the current laws they cannot. India is pushing the government in London to grant them ownership rights and to keep Kenya as a crown colony. Naturally, we oppose this.”

I remembered what the ship’s captain had told me as we approached the teeming harbor at Mombasa. “But if they are business owners surely—”

I hadn’t even finished before the doctor cut me off. “One cannot expect an American to be sensible about these things!”

“Yes, we know nothing about colonies and revolution,” I said sweetly.

Rex threw back his head and roared with laughter. “Hoist with your own petard, Bunny.” He covered my hand lightly with his own. “I’m glad you’re taking an interest in what will become of us. I know you don’t mean to stay forever, but I do hope we will have the pleasure of your company for some time to come.”

He removed his hand then, but the warmth of it lingered on my skin and when I looked up, Helen was regarding me thoughtfully.

Kit rose then and lifted his glass. “To both of our enchanting new additions,” he said, graciously including Dora in his salute. The rest of the company joined in and Dora and I clinked glasses merrily across the table. I sipped deeply from the Sauternes, thinking that if Rex could run a country as well as he could stock a wine cellar, Kenya wouldn’t have a thing to worry about.

Rex rose. “And another toast, to Bianca and Gervase, who are leaving us tomorrow. Safe journey, my friends.”

Everyone drank, and I turned to the Pembertons. “Where are you bound? Safari?”

Bianca’s only reply was another curl of her lip, but Gervase was more forthcoming.

“We’re going down to the coast. Our place is farthest up the valley, and the altitude isn’t good for Bianca’s blood pressure. Once a year we take a rest and go down to sea level.”

“Ryder has a house in Lamu,” Helen put in. “It’s a divine old ruin, once the palace of an Arab slave trader! It’s terribly haunted by ghosts and djinns and that sort of thing, but it’s perched on the loveliest spot overlooking the ocean. It makes for a wonderful escape, and Ryder is a dear about loaning the place to any of his friends desperate to get down to sea level.”

“He must be a popular fellow,” I said mildly.

Helen gave a peal of laughter. “Oh, my dear, he’s legend! If you’d stayed in Nairobi any longer you’d have heard some of the stories.”

“Most of them far too scandalous for a respectable dinner table,” Miss Halliwell put in, her lips prim.

“Oh, he isn’t as bad as all that,” Helen said, flapping a hand at her. “He’s just high-spirited. For instance,” she said, turning her attention to me, “every year at Christmas everyone gathers at the club. It’s a wonderful time, so many people from all over the colony meeting up with old friends, the parties, the dances! Well, at one of the formal dinners, everyone was having a marvelous time when all of a sudden, the club steward comes in shrieking something about a lion out in the street.”

I lifted a brow. “A lion. In Nairobi?” I glanced around the table, but Rex was nodding.

“There was. A young male. Nasty piece of work, too.”

Helen picked up the tale, breathless and wide-eyed. “Well, everyone was so stunned, they just sat like statues, they simply couldn’t move! But not Ryder. He got up and walked straight to the nearest gun rack, took down a rifle and strode right into the street and shot that lion dead!”

Rex leaned near. “The story made it as far as the English papers because he was wearing full evening dress at the time.”

I gave him a little push. “Now I know you’re teasing.”

“Not at all,” he protested. “I’ll dig the clipping out after dinner.”

Good as his word, after we’d adjourned to the drawing room for a little dancing to the gramophone, Rex appeared at my elbow with an album, a sort of scrapbook of the colony. There were pages devoted to the races and the Christmas festivities in Nairobi with photographs of smiling people and newspaper clippings detailing the silly pranks they played on one another, some of them straight out of the schoolroom. But here and there were other clippings, sober reminders of lives lost too early, death notices and mentions of accidents and misfortunes.

“A hard place, your Africa,” I said softly.

Rex gave me a gentle smile. “But worth every life it takes, and so many more.”

“You really love it here, don’t you?”

The elegant silvering brows rose. “Of course. I know you don’t understand that yet. How could you? Africa is brutal, but you will come to love her, in spite of the brutality. Perhaps even because of it.”

He turned the page then and pulled out a loose clipping. He handed it to me with a smile. There were two photographs with the article. One featured the lion, stretched out on the bar of the Norfolk Hotel, dripping blood onto the polished wood. Everyone was packed around it in their evening finery, raising glasses in a toast to the narrow escape they’d had. Only Ryder was absent. The second photo was of him on his own. He was wearing his evening clothes, and was only half-turned towards the camera, as if someone had called his name and he had lifted his head in response.

“He wouldn’t let them photograph him with the lion,” Rex told me. “Thought it was all the most awful palaver. I don’t even think he kept the claws off that one.”

“The claws?”

“Oh, yes. Bit of a tradition of his. Every big cat he takes, lion or leopard, he takes a claw or tooth to put onto a bracelet he wears. Not as a trophy, mind you. He says it’s to remind him that every life out here counts for something and shouldn’t be forgot. Oh, dear. Bunny seems to have found the single malt. Do excuse me.”

He took the album with him but the clipping was still in my hand. I looked down at the photographs, the laughing, lively faces crowded around the atrocity of the dead lion. There was something faintly obscene about it, and I was absurdly glad that Ryder hadn’t been a part of it. Then I thought of the bracelet he wore, each tooth or claw representing a different animal he had killed, and I shivered a little.

“What’s the matter? Goose walk over your grave?” Kit’s voice was warm in my ear.

“You try wearing a backless evening gown,” I said, turning quickly. “You’d shiver, too.” I dropped the clipping to the table behind me and tucked my arm into his. “Come dance with me. I seem to remember your form is as good on the dance floor as it is in other places.”

He laughed and swung me into his arms.