A Spear of Summer Grass

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  A quirk of the lips was the nearest he came to a smile. “I just didn’t want to see you give up so fast. It doesn’t suit you.”

  And with that he turned and strode away into the gathering darkness.

  Dora called to me then and I joined her on the front veranda. An assortment of servants had emerged from the house and were shuffling towards the pile of baggage, haphazardly taking as little as possible before scuttling into the house with it.

  “Is there any sort of organisation?” I asked her. “Anyone in charge?”

  She shrugged. “I asked, but they don’t seem to understand English.”

  “Of course they understand English. You there, yes, you with the turban. Are you the boss?”

  He shook his head and pointed to a cottage some little distance away. The place was dark and shuttered, and after a lengthy conversation involving more hand signals than words I discovered that the farm manager lived in that cottage but was not presently at home.

  “It seems we are not expected,” I told Dora. “I suppose Mr. Fraser’s insistence on my departing Nairobi so suddenly has caught the staff on the hop. We weren’t scheduled to arrive for almost a week yet,” I reminded her. I turned back to the fellow in the turban. “May we go inside at least instead of standing out here getting devoured by insects?”

  I swatted at the various things trying to suck my blood and the fellow understood me at once. He gestured for us to follow and we entered Fairlight at last. I gave a sigh of relief. It wasn’t as bad as I had feared based on the outside. Of course, candlelight makes everything look nicer, and I realised Fairlight was not wired for electricity. There were candles and paraffin lamps instead.

  “How very nineteenth-century,” I murmured. “Is there food?” I mimed eating.

  He nodded and waved us through. The entry hall, panelled in some very nice tropical woods, gave onto a pleasant drawing room with a broad fireplace with a mossy velvet fender. The dusty parquet floors were scattered with moth-eaten hides of various animals, and trophy heads hung on the walls, staring with blank, glassy eyes. Feathers were spilling out of the armchairs, but at least they looked comfortable, and I sank into one with an audible sigh.

  He disappeared down a service passage and reappeared a few minutes later with a tray.

  “Soup,” he said, pointing to the tray. There was no soup to be found, but there was a mixed rice dish with bits of unidentifiable meat and curry spices, some roasted potatoes, flatbreads and more boiled eggs.

  “By the time we leave Africa, I’m going to be clucking,” I told Dora.

  “Don’t complain. At least you know a boiled egg can’t poison you,” she said, peering suspiciously at the meat.

  I was too ravenous to care. I forked in the food as fast as I could, and I was happy to find there was a rice pudding for dessert and happier still to find the supply of booze. I poured us each a nightcap and we stretched out by the fire.

  “I’m so tired I don’t think I can get up to go to bed,” Dora said at last.

  “I know.” I eyed the oozing sofa with distaste. “You realise we will have to do something about this place. If we’re going to be in exile for months, we cannot live like savages.”

  “Hush,” she said, her eyes closed. “They’ll hear you.”

  “No, they won’t. And they don’t think of themselves as savages. Besides, I wasn’t talking about them. It’s one thing to live in a hut with a leopard skin for a blanket because you don’t know better. It’s entirely different to live in these conditions and do nothing to improve them,” I told her, plucking a loose feather out of the upholstery.

  “Tomorrow,” she promised, her voice drowsy. She began to murmur her prayers, but I kept talking.

  “We’ll make a list,” I said, warming to the idea. “It will be nice to have a project. And Nigel will be very happy to know the place is being spruced up. Materials might be an issue, but labour should be cheap.”

  Dora’s only reply was a snore, and I lay awake, watching the shadows on the ceiling. We never did get up and go to bed. My first night at Fairlight was spent drinking on a mouldering sofa in a house that wasn’t mine, listening to the sounds of a darkness that was darker than any I had ever known.

  The next morning I awoke to find Dora poking me in the shoulder and an assemblage of various native fellows standing in a line, staring at me curiously.

  “What the devil is their problem?”

  I tried to roll over, but Dora stopped me. “Well, you do look a bit of a fright.”

  I sat up and took inventory. Crumpled silk dress stained with red dust and Ryder’s fingerprints on the sleeve. Shoes caked in mud and buffalo blood. Empty flask on my lap, and I knew without even looking in a mirror that yesterday’s maquillage would be smeared everywhere.

  “Say no more. Is there hot water?” I croaked.

  “After a fashion,” she said. She pushed a cup of hot coffee into my hands. I detested coffee and she knew it, but it did the trick. I drank it down and lurched to my feet.

  She showed me to the bathroom and I turned back to face her. “Is this a joke? Dodo, I count seven different kinds of insects, including a spider that may well be poisonous.”

  “Spiders are arachnids,” she corrected.

  I slammed the door in her face and applied my bloody shoe to the lurkers in the bathtub, eradicating all, except one little scorpion that dodged behind the toilet. I flung myself into the hot water and scrubbed, grateful that she had unpacked my French-milled soaps and a proper washcloth. After I was clean and dry and had washed my hair, I felt a pinch better.

  Dodo had laid out a particularly fetching frock of green-and-black figured silk with green suede shoes, and as I put them on I wondered if they’d make it through the day. This country was hard on shoes, I thought ruefully. The white suede pair covered in Anthony Wickenden’s blood had been burned by the Norfolk staff, and the white silk ones soaked in buffalo blood would be next. I could have cried.

  I emerged from my room looking vastly improved and feeling famished. Dora had found the dining room and there was toast, proper toast, with oranges and boiled eggs and some sort of meat that fought back when I poked it with a fork.

  “Make a list, Dodo. First order of business—find a cook.”

  Mercifully, she remembered the untouched picnic hamper from the previous day and we fell on it like Mongols, tearing into the parcels only to find flatbreads hardened to the consistency of rocks and some fruit that lay limp and apologetic in the bottom of the basket. There was a clutch of boiled eggs there as well, and some sort of potted meat I wouldn’t have touched if you’d offered me a palace on the moon.

  When the meager meal was finished, we took a tour of the house led by the turbaned fellow whose name, as unlikely as it seemed, was Pierre.

  “Surely that can’t be right,” I murmured to Dodo. But the name gave me an idea, and I turned to him. “Parlez-vous français?”

  His face lit up. “Oui!” And then he burst into a volley of rapid and fairly grammatical French. In a very few minutes I learned everything I needed to know about him and about the situation at Fairlight. Dora, whose French limped along at its most athletic, had been left far behind. She waited for me to translate.

  “Pierre was educated at a mission school not far from here. French Benedictine nuns who taught him their own language and a smattering of Latin, but no English.”

  “Latin?”

  “That’s what the man says. He remembers Nigel quite well, although he was merely the houseboy at the time. Since then he’s grown and married. Two wives, although he hopes to add a third soon.”

  “Goodness,” Dora said faintly, but I noticed she was looking at Pierre with heightened interest. His features were arresting, more akin to those painted on an Egyptian tomb than what one would expect to find in sub-Saharan Africa. His
nose was sharp and beaky and his skin the colour of polished walnuts. He was tall and stately and moved with such peculiar grace, he would have put any Paris mannequin to shame.

  “He’s Somali and Christian—good for us because it means that, unlike a Mohammedan majordomo, he’ll touch pork and alcohol.”

  “Well, that covers your nutritional requirements,” she put in.

  She wasn’t wrong. I related the rest of what Pierre had told me. “There’s a farm manager, a fellow called Gates. He has a wife and a pair of children, but they’re away for a few days. There’s a cottage down the road that Fairlight lets to an artist from New York, and farther on is the boma where Ryder lives. They are our nearest neighbours. He said we should expect people coming from farther afield as soon as they realise we’re here. Apparently newcomers are fresh meat.”

  I gave her a wolfish smile and she turned to Pierre and asked him in her halting French if she might see the garden. Since she always believed that volume was at least as important as vocabulary in making herself understood, she stood a foot away from Pierre, repeating, “LE JARDIN. COMPRENEZ-VOUS? LE JARDIN?”

  He looked to me and I nodded, taking myself off to the kitchen. At least, I went to where I thought the kitchen might be. Instead it seemed to be a sort of butler’s pantry with an assortment of cloudy crystal and cracked china and a long table, and I realised Fairlight had been built along the same lines as Reveille with the kitchens outside the house. It made sense for several reasons, the most important of which were the heat and the risk of fire. In the butler’s pantry there was a door leading outside and I headed out and down a short path to a separate building. I could smell something that might have been food, but I almost hoped wasn’t.

  I tapped at the door and entered immediately. I have regretted few things so quickly in my life. The smell was repellent. Old grease and rotten vegetables formed the base note. Over it hung the sulfurous reek of old boiled eggs, choking out almost everything else. Almost everything.

  A plump old man, the cook, I had no doubt, hunched at the hearth, smoking. I could smell unwashed flesh and soiled clothes, but something besides, something sweet and heavy.

  I clapped my hands and the old man peered at me, struggling to focus through a cloud of dense and familiar smoke.

  “What’s the matter, Grandpa? Ganja got your tongue?”

  I grabbed up a broom and advanced. He got to his feet and started gabbling away in one of the native tongues. I brandished the broom.

  “No wonder the food is so disgusting. You’ve probably kept the best of it for yourself. Get up!” He had prostrated himself at my feet but rather spoiled the effect by giggling. I poked him lightly with the broom. “Get up, I said. Now get out.” I fumbled in the pocket of my dress, rather surprised to find anything there. “Here’s a pound. Take it in lieu of wages and don’t come back.”

  He took the money and started jabbering again, rubbing his fingers together as if he wanted more.

  “Not likely,” I told him roundly. “You’re lucky you got anything. You could have poisoned us with the trash you served. Now get out.” I lifted the broom and he scurried away, so quickly he left his smouldering cigarette behind.

  I lifted it and sniffed. Then I took a deep drag and held it.

  “Delilah!”

  Dora stood in the doorway, her tone heavy with disapproval.

  I exhaled slowly. “I found the cook.” I held up the cigarette. “This is why he wasn’t up to par. Quite good stuff actually. I haven’t had any with this much kick since Harlem.”

  She reached out and took the cigarette and ground it out on a hearthstone, scattering the remains of the butt over the rock. “Honestly, Delilah. This isn’t a party.”

  “I’m celebrating getting rid of that foul cook. I gave him a pound in lieu of wages.”

  She choked. “Do you have any idea how much money that is to these people? He’ll be robbed and killed before he even gets home.”

  “Serve him right for keeping that meat,” I said, pointing to a slab of mutton that was heaving with maggots.

  Dora picked it up with a pair of tongs and threw it out the door. She returned and surveyed the rest of the kitchen. “It’s completely foul. The entire place will have to be turned out and scrubbed before we can eat anything.”

  “You sound defeated.”

  “No, I’m just wishing I hadn’t ground out that cigarette,” she told me.

  I laughed. “That’s the spirit. It really was good. I wonder where he got it.”

  She gave me a reproachful glance. “That’s quite enough of that. I was only joking, you know. Such things are sinful and wrong. Besides, Aunt Mossy expects me to keep an eye on you.”

  I lifted a brow at her and she went on. “She took me to luncheon in Paris and we had a lovely chat. I didn’t think I ought to tell you before, but I suppose it’s time. She’s quite keen that you really settle down, Delilah. She thinks you need purpose, direction. And she thinks that this may be the best opportunity for you to find it.”

  “The best or the last?”

  “Both.”

  We stared at each other a long moment, then I gave her a small smile. “Not yet, Dodo. Not just yet. Now make a list of what you want done and Pierre will organise some boys to do it.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “For a walk. Africa beckons.”

  * * *

  I changed my clothes, leaving off my printed silk frock for a pair of riding breeches and tall boots and a man’s silk shirt. It had been Misha’s. After his death I had taken more than the Volkonsky jewels. Misha always had gorgeous taste in clothes and he had been slender as a Grecian faun. I had hauled armfuls of his shirts to the tailor to have them taken in, and I wore them carelessly, open at the throat with the sleeves rolled to the elbow. They reminded me of the soft cotton shirts I had worn during the hottest dog days in Louisiana. Of course, Misha would never have worn anything as pedestrian as cotton. He had dressed with flair, buying only the very best materials. I wasn’t surprised his shirts had outlived him.

  I started off down the path Pierre had pointed out, heading towards the savannah. The air was cool, touched with the faintest tang of woodsmoke and dung, but the sun was warming the earth, sending up the fragrance of fresh soil. The farm had once thrived growing pyrethrum, I remembered, a crop related to chrysanthemums. The flowers were pressed for their oil, a pungent substance used in pesticides. Only a few of the fields were still in production. Most of the farm had fallen fallow and the disused fields were now long stretches of earth that had surrendered once more to the wilderness. Here and there thickets of acacia had grown up, sheltering birds and small twittering creatures that sent up an alarm as I walked. I had only gone a few yards when I realised I should have brought a gun. A gun, a club, even a stick would have been smart. But no, I had charged into the African bush with nothing more than a silk scarf to defend myself.

  “Idiot,” I muttered. But I pressed on. The path was wide and level and the going was easy. I stepped around a scorpion that raised his tail in challenge and sent a flock of pretty little deer vaulting away. At least I thought they were deer. They were most likely some form of gazelle, and I regretted again not having brought a gun. I had heard gazelles were excellent eating, and even if they weren’t, they had to be preferable to the teeming mutton the cook had left behind.

  After a while, the ground rose a little. Just past the slope of a slender hill it fell away again to reveal a cottage nestled in a grove of acacia trees. The doors and windows were thrown wide, and I knew from the smell of turpentine that I had found the artist’s cottage.

  I called as I approached and after a long moment a fellow emerged, shirtless and wiping his hands on a rag. He stared as I came near, and suddenly gave a loud whoop.

  “Delilah!”

  He vaulted down from t
he veranda and scooped me up into a bear hug.

  “Hello, Kit. My majordomo said there was an artist from New York here. I didn’t dare hope it might be you.”

  “Well, it is. My God, it must be a mirage. I cannot believe you are here. Let me look at you.”

  He pushed me away and looked at me with his critical artist’s eye. “A few years older, but my God, it doesn’t show. That face! Straight out of Praxiteles. The shoulders of a goddess. And those breasts—” He put out his hands and I slapped them away.

  “Come now, darling. It isn’t as if I haven’t seen them before.”

  “You haven’t seen them in six years. And they’ve been married since you last saw them.”

  “But I imagine they are still spectacular.”

  “Naturally. Now invite me in for lunch and a drink and we’ll catch up properly.”

  He looped an arm over my shoulders and led me in. “Welcome to my little kingdom, my queen.”

  I stepped into the cottage and inhaled sharply. “Kit, they’re wonderful.”

  Kit had been a bit of a disappointment in New York. He was the eldest son in a family as famous for their blue blood as their black account books. His father had refreshed the already overflowing family coffers with smart investments in railroads and steel, but Kit had turned up his patrician nose at both. Instead he had dabbled, pursuing his art with only a little less verve than he pursued his women. A particularly nasty divorce case where Kit had been cited had put an end to that. His mother had taken ill over the scandal and his father had shipped him off to Kenya with an allowance and his paintbrushes and instructions not to come back unless he wanted to kill her for good. I had lost touch with him—all of the old crowd had. But I had always thought of him fondly. He was thirty-five and more of a boy than any man I had ever met.

  And he was strikingly handsome, with bright yellow-gold hair and a pillowy, sulky mouth made for kissing. He had a pair of warm brown eyes that could melt the dress right off a girl, and a body that made you glad to be a woman. He had done a few years of sculpture study and rumour had it that all the humping marble about had given him the physique of a minor Greek god. I had made it my business to investigate the rumours and all I ever said on the subject was that they hadn’t done him justice. Not by half. We had had a splendid time together for six weeks. Then I had been off to London and he had found himself another distraction. It ended—as such things ought to—with mutual affection and something that was almost, but not quite, warm enough to be regret.