by Frank Coates
She and Edward had resumed a cordial but cool relationship. He continued to talk about leaving Kenya as soon as possible, but now made it clear he would do so with or without her. With no assets or means of support, Dana had no option but to go with him. This made her uneasy about continuing her relationship with Sam. She liked him very much. He was kind and attentive and the sex was more exciting than any she’d had, but neither of them had used the word love, and they made no plans together beyond agreeing the next time they would meet. With Edward pressing her for a decision, she decided to raise the matter of their future to find out if Sam wanted more than what they had.
This was not the first time she had planned to do so. Two weeks before, when Sam came through Kipipiri with more horses from Abyssinia, they met again in the banda. It was the perfect occasion to raise the matter as, unlike in Nairobi, she didn’t have to hurry home until late afternoon. On that occasion they dozed after making love and then made love again as the sun sent pins of light through the banda walls to move like fireflies over their naked, sweating bodies.
She preferred making love there in the banda, because at the Muthaiga Club she arrived late morning, but needed to leave by mid-afternoon, otherwise she’d be caught on the treacherous road down the escarpment after dark. However, as she picked her way through the bush towards Sam’s flat, she had to admit it had an extra degree of excitement. The secrecy of their meetings added a touch of danger, and her body tingled in anticipation.
She knocked gently on the door and he opened it with that broad smile that said he was happy she was there. He drew her to him as he closed the door and they kissed. His lips pressed warmly against hers and he wrapped his arms around her and slid his hands to her bottom.
‘You have no underwear on,’ he said with a grin.
‘Exactly. Isn’t that how you like me dressed?’
‘It is,’ he said and took her in his arms again, fondling her as he slid the shoulder strap from her dress.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t undress me. I want you now. Take me here, standing at the door.’
He lifted her dress and felt her wet warmth with his fingers, and rubbed her little nub until she moaned for him.
He opened the front of his pants and, gripping her under her buttocks, used his weight to pin her against the wall then pressed into her.
As she clung to him, teeth biting into his shoulder, she couldn’t think about love, but she knew she never wanted this to end.
‘Sam?’ she said from beside him on the bed.
‘Hmm …?’
He sounded as if he’d come from a light sleep.
‘Sam, can I ask you something?’
‘Anything, my darling,’ he muttered.
‘Seriously. But you don’t have to answer if you feel you can’t.’
‘Mmm … must be something important. I’d better listen.’ He raised himself on an elbow and rested his head on his hand, looking at her.
She felt self-conscious under his gaze and lost her nerve.
‘Edward wants to leave Kenya,’ she said bluntly, then bit her lip. It wasn’t at all how she’d planned to tell him.
He stared at her for a long moment without a word. She tried to read his expression, but failed.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘And you will leave with him, I presume.’
‘I … well … Yes, I suppose I will.’
He nodded.
‘Unless …’ she began, then paused. ‘What are you thinking, Sam?’
‘I’m not thinking anything.’
‘Yes, you are.’
‘What could I be thinking?’ He swung his legs over the side of the bed. ‘Could I think that a Kikuyu man — a horse smuggler — and a white lady could live together in Kenya? The same Kikuyu man who had been laughed out of the Muthaiga Club when he dared suggest he could build a coffee refinery with white partners? Surely not.’
He smiled to take the edge off his words, but she could see the bitterness remained.
‘It depends on how we feel about one another,’ she said, reaching a hand towards him. He ignored it.
‘Dana, don’t you see? It doesn’t make any difference what we feel about each other. It’s what others feel about us that matters.’
She slid from under the covers and sat beside him. ‘We don’t need to think about anyone else. The rest of the world can do and think what it likes, can’t it?’
Sam remained tight-lipped.
‘Sam?’ She tried to catch his eye but he stared straight ahead.
‘What do you feel, Sam? Is what you feel strong enough to overcome the ugliness out there?’
He went to the window and stood there, glaring down the track and across the garden to the Muthaiga Club’s steep tiled roof.
‘Sam?’
‘You don’t understand, Dana. You can’t understand. That’s the problem you have. You can’t imagine what it’s like to feel animosity aimed at you simply because of the colour of your skin. But I can tell you this much: if we allowed ourselves to do as you suggest, to … to just ignore the whole world, you would soon enough feel something similar. Oh, yes. And then we’d really have questions to ask: How strongly do we feel? Is all this worth it?’
Dana came in from the garden lugging a basket brimming with tomatoes and potatoes. She swung it upwards to the dining table, but caught the edge, sending the vegetables bouncing across the floor.
‘Damn it!’ she said, and sank into a chair.
Edward came in from the study.
‘Dana … Are you all right?’
She held the back of her hand to her forehead. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Darling, you look exhausted. And hot. Do you have a fever? Let me see.’
He placed his hand on her forehead. ‘Hmm, you are a bit feverish. Are you keeping up your quinine?’
‘I started taking extra when I began to feel ill, but it doesn’t seem to help.’
‘Then it’s off to Dr Whitmore with you. Can’t have you coming down with malaria just as we’re planning to leave.’
Surely he was wrong. It was not possible. Dana stared at him as her mind raced through dates and people and places. Three months. It could only be Sam … or Edward.
‘Are you sure? I mean, about the timing,’ she asked.
‘It’s not an exact science,’ he said. ‘But I would guess you are still in your first trimester. Somewhere between eleven and fourteen weeks. Don’t you know when you had your last period?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m not regular. I don’t understand this. I take precautions, and I … I didn’t conceive early in my marriage. I was told I might not be able to at all.’
‘Obviously your advisers were wrong,’ the doctor said. ‘Mind you, we can’t be too critical of them. We didn’t know a lot about infertility back then. I take it you’re not pleased with the news.’
Was she pleased? She was … overawed. On the one hand, she was delighted. On the other, Edward would be furious. He’d warned her not to get pregnant. But accidents can happen with contraception. Surely he’d understand that. She couldn’t think about what might happen next.
‘No!’ she said. ‘I’m pleased. Very pleased. Just surprised.’
On her journey home she tried to think of a way to handle the situation with Edward. She knew his first response would be to insist upon a termination. She had agreed to it in principle. When Polly had become pregnant under similar circumstances, Archie insisted on a termination, arguing quite correctly that there was no way of knowing if he or one of the other members of the Zephyr club was the father. She could explain to Edward that the timing of the pregnancy meant the father could be none of their dinner party friends. But Edward knew about her first night with Sam and, even if she could convince him that it was his and to allow her to have the baby, the child might be black. That would be the end of her life with Edward.
Edward was calm. Very calm. When Dana told him she was pregnant he was sitting in the parlour with a pile of English new
spapers. His face reddened, but he said and did nothing for a few moments. Eventually he arose from his chair and walked out to the veranda, his hands clasped behind his back. He stood there studying the hills surrounding the farm and when he returned his expression was composed.
‘This is totally unexpected,’ he said.
‘Yes. I’m sorry. I was taking precautions, but —’
‘Wasn’t this supposed to be impossible?’
‘Well, no … not impossible, but unlikely, according to the doctors.’
‘But you’ve had it confirmed by Dr Whitmore?’
‘Yes.’
He nodded. ‘At least he can be relied upon to be discreet.’ He stroked his jowls. ‘I will make arrangements to have it terminated.’
‘Edward, I’m sure it’s yours —’
He held up a finger, halting her protest. A flicker of anger crossed his face. ‘There is no way you can be sure of that. It will never do. You will have it terminated. I will arrange it.’
She knew it was pointless trying to convince him otherwise. In her mind she had already been through every argument she could imagine and lost them all comprehensively.
Edward returned to his armchair, gave his newspaper a noisy rattle, and resumed his reading.
A week later — a week during which nothing changed in their normal routine — Edward handed her a railway ticket.
‘You leave for Mombasa in five days,’ he said. ‘Dr Alessandro himself will collect you at the station. He thinks you will need a few days to recuperate. Your return ticket is open-dated.’
That night she lay in bed with the cool mountain breeze ruffling the curtains. She stared at the shadows dancing on the ceiling, thinking of Sam, who was somewhere in Abyssinia and not due back for a fortnight.
What had been in his mind when they last met? He wouldn’t open his heart to her. He was angry, perhaps not at her, but at the world.
She ached to see him, but what would he say about the baby?
Dana had written and destroyed several notes to send to the Muthaiga Club for Sam. In all likelihood, she would be back from Mombasa before he came through Kipipiri again. In any case, what could she say? He was so sure they couldn’t survive as a couple in Kenya. How much worse would it be if she had a white child? Even a black child? There was just nowhere in Kenya where they could live in peace.
The temptation to share her secret with one of her friends — Polly or Averil — was almost irresistible, but if she told them about Edward’s objection to the baby, she’d have to tell them why and she didn’t want to reveal Sam to them. This troubled her: perhaps Sam was right. The stigma attached to being a white woman with a black lover might be greater than she could bear. She was alone.
She tried to be appreciative of Edward’s consideration as the day of her departure drew nearer. He helped her arrange a delivery of dry feed for the horses so they avoided colic from the thick new pasture that followed the start of the rains. He was sweet on the several occasions when she was on the point of tears, but when she looked into his eyes, hoping to see compassion and a reprieve for her baby, she found only determination.
Edward acted like a conspirator in a crime story, keeping Dana secreted in the first-class waiting room at Nairobi as the train filled with passengers. He had considered using Gilgil station, a mere ten miles away from home, but the news that Dana Northcote had caught the train to Mombasa alone would be all over the highlands within a day.
He hurried her on board at the last moment. Placing her suitcase on the rack, he kissed her on the cheek with the conductor’s whistle screeching in her ears.
Dana was alone in the small carriage, watching tents and huts flash by her window as the train climbed from the swampy flats surrounding Nairobi, over the Embakasi rise, dotted with Maasai villages, and onto the Athi Plains. Herds of zebra and wildebeest bolted in fright at the sound of the train’s whistle. It was an amazing transformation. Within less than a hundred miles, the land had changed from high, rolling green hills and forests to a sea of yellowed grass undulating to a distant pale blue horizon.
At the Athi River bridge a herd of elephants bathed and trumpeted. Dana watched them as she passed, reflecting upon the speed of events over the previous days.
The gently rocking carriage enticed her into sleep. She dozed through the heat of the day, but awoke in fright, unable to get her bearings. Weird baobab trees, whose naked, spindly arms reached pleadingly to the heavens, stood sentinel in endless grassland.
They stopped at a dak bungalow at dusk to eat a hurried meal as the staff made the beds in the first-and second-class carriages. She ate little and slept badly through a night punctuated by whistles, jolting carriages and strange dreams.
The sun rose over the Taru Desert with menace, but there was not a living thing there to fall prey to its deadly rays. The earth, thorn bushes and stones had been bleached the same pitiless grey. The world was a barren place.
Dana felt a terrible foreboding. What if this pregnancy would be her last? It was a miracle that she’d conceived at all. What if she, like the landscape, could never again light the spark of life?
After an hour of stultifying sameness within which Dana fretted about the impending abortion, a sprig of green appeared on a bush and was gone in a flash. A moment later, another. And another. By the time the train reached Rabai at the crest of the headland that swept down to the Indian Ocean, the landscape had been reborn. A verdant forest had replaced the desert. It was as if the earth had arisen from its own ashes and given birth to a brave new garden.
Dana had also gone through a form of rebirth. As the train huffed and puffed into Mombasa station she was now in no doubt about what she had to do. She could not forego this chance — perhaps her last — to have a child.
She alighted from the train, ignored the top-hatted figure who politely asked if she were Mrs Northcote, and found a small Indian hotel in a back street of the old quarter where she again considered her decision and her ability to carry it through. She had the doctor’s sizeable fee in her purse, and another small amount she could access from her bank account. It was enough to survive for the term of the pregnancy.
At the post office she sent a telegram to Edward: Have changed my mind about new delivery. Will await its safe arrival and advise.
CHAPTER 28
As Sam made the long ride back from Abyssinia with his latest herd of ponies, he had plenty of time to reflect upon his last meeting with Dana. He knew he could have handled the situation better, had not his injured pride interfered.
When Dana told him she would be leaving Kenya with Edward, she seemed to accept the situation with equanimity. He’d thought they’d shared something beyond the obvious enjoyment of each other’s bodies, and her attitude came as a shock. His response had been harsh and ill-considered.
She left him there then, nursing his damaged pride, saying she was already late to make her journey back to Kipipiri. She was right, it was late, but he later felt it was his thoughtless words that had sent her hurrying home.
He’d remained on the bed, thinking with the taste and the smell of her lingering, until the last of the sun fell from the drapes, and the darkness took its place. There was a world of visible difference between them, which of course was what white Kenya would see. But with such obvious differences, it was easy to bring their similarities into sharper focus. They needed time to explore them more fully, and if he let her go, they would never know what they might have lost.
By morning, he’d made up his mind to go to her before returning to Nairobi. He’d tell her she was too important to him to let her go; they had too much in common to let superficial differences part them. He’d say that of all the challenges they might face together, it was more important to test their feelings than to miss their chance at happiness. He’d ask her to leave her husband and make a new life, somewhere, with him.
The silver Willys-Knight roadster was sitting under the vine-covered lattice as he rode towards the farmhouse.
He still had the excuse of their agistment agreement to explain his presence there.
‘You’re too late, old man,’ Edward, pleased to enlighten him, said. ‘Dana left for England a few days ago.’
‘Already? I thought you were still thinking about it.’
‘Change of plans. I’ll be following her pretty soon, of course. When I’ve settled our affairs here. I’m afraid you’ll have to find another place to rest your horses.’
Sam was numb as he rode on to Nairobi. The animals were exhausted, and he was too, but there was something wrong. Something very wrong. Dana would not have made that decision without at least informing him. He knew she had at least that much affection for him. He arrived in Nairobi in time to stable the herd before boarding the night train to the coast.
Dana stood on the sea wall beneath Fort Jesus, watching a fishing dhow make its way across the old harbour. The helmsman’s mate gathered the lateen sail to the yard and swivelled it around the mast to make the tack. The crab-claw sail filled with the wind, and the spritely craft lifted its nose and ploughed through the light chop towards the mouth of the harbour.
She had come to the waterfront to think. Having declared her intentions to Edward, she knew he would be on the next train to Mombasa. Indeed he may already be en route. The old Arab trading port of Mombasa was bigger than the young upstart, Nairobi, but not big enough to conceal a lone white woman. She had told Edward of her intentions without knowing how to implement them.
A gust of wind came up and tried to snatch Dana’s hat but she caught it in time.
‘Ah, the kusi,’ a voice from behind her declared. ‘It wants the memsahib’s fine hat.’
She turned to find an old man with a face like chiselled leather standing a few paces away. Apart from his dark brown face, he was otherwise completely white: a white beard and hair; a long white kanzu and white kofia cap.