Green City in the Sun

by Wood, Barbara

  "This bloke captained the Eldoret cricket side, you see," came Norich-Hastings's voice, "and there was a one-day fixture against Kisumu. He won the toss, chose to bat, and went in to open the innings. By teatime he was still making the runs."

  Valentine listened to the story and laughed with everyone else. He was in excellent spirits because of the appointment he had with Dr. Hare in Nairobi later that afternoon. The physician had gladly agreed to open his office for a private consult, even though it was Sunday, and Valentine was confident that the man would have a solution to Rose's problem.

  As he helped himself to deviled kidneys and scrambled eggs, half listening to talk around the table of coffee growing, Valentine reminded himself that, really, it was his fault that his and Rose's sexual relations were strained.

  After all, he decided, it could not have been easy for a lady of her delicacy and breeding to give up a life of comfort and social prominence for a tent camp in the bush! Unlike Grace, who seemed to relish each challenge Africa offered, Rose was afraid of everything about this country. And there were no other ladies of her own kind to offer support. Lucille Donald had little time for Rose's sort of socializing; besides, the two women were as different as night and day. Hyenas in the henhouse were of no concern to Rose, nor how to make homemade glue out of buffalo hooves. And Lucille had not the faintest interest in fashion or style, was not curious about hemlines or where the royal family was vacationing.

  Still, despite being left alone most of the time, since Valentine had to be out on the estate all day to make sure the tender young coffee trees were being properly cared for and since Grace had her hands full with trying to get the local Africans to come to her clinic, Rose seemed to have adjusted rather well. In fact, Valentine realized now as he laughed when another funny story was told, Rose seemed almost to welcome being left alone.

  "I've got five hundred acres of coffee in bearing," said a man from Limuru, "but because of lack of rain, the beans are small, there are too many defective berries, and the coffee's got a blasted dull look to it." He turned to Valentine. "How goes your crop?"

  "It's going rather well, actually."

  Those at his table were not surprised. The earl's great luck and continued prosperity were the talk of East Africa. Everything he touched, it seemed, turned to gold.

  "I hear you dammed the Chania."

  "Yes. When it looked like the rains weren't going to come, back in March. Then I dug a furrow, so my fields are being irrigated."

  "Must've surprised the darkies to see the river tampered with! They don't think ahead, you know, have no concept of tomorrow. They never grow more food than they can eat today, never wonder what they'll do if a drought hits. It's all shauri ya mungu to them."

  "Bloody wogs," interjected a man with a sun-reddened face and bushy blond beard. "Can't get 'em to work for love or money! They sit on their black arses and expect americani and sugar and oil to be handed them, without for a moment considering that one must work to earn it!"

  "You can take the monkey out of the jungle," said the Limuru man, "but you can't take the jungle out of the monkey!"

  As Valentine stirred his tea, he stole a glance at his watch. His long legs shifted restlessly under the table.

  "Did you enjoy the hunt, Your Lordship?"

  He looked up into Lady Margaret's smiling face. She reminded him of a Pekingese dog, but with a better temperament. "And how is your charming wife, the countess?" she added before he could reply. "We need to see more of Lady Rose in Nairobi!"

  Those were the times when she came to life, Valentine realized, those few occasions when Rose did come down to Nairobi. There had been the grand ball at the Muthaiga Club, given in honor of the king of Sweden, and then that pompous planting ceremony in front of Government House, to which Rose had donated a cutting of her precious roses. In Nairobi Rose was gay and lively, the center of admiring attention; if it weren't for the long journey from the Central Province, riding in wagons and stopping every night to camp, Valentine knew that she would come down more often.

  "You must thank her for the tea," Lady Margaret said. "I found it be an exciting blend."

  Rose had brought with her from England a special private blend of Mysore and Ceylon tea that had been in her family for generations. When the supply had run out, instead of sending to her London tea broker for a fresh supply, Rose had had a firm in Nairobi substitute for the Ceylon a locally grown tea, cultivated in the cooler regions near Lake Victoria, and had found it produced a unique, pleasing flavor. When Rose had remarked upon it the last time she was in Nairobi, at a gala supper in honor of the King's birthday, and Lady Margaret had expressed interest, Rose had sent her a packet of the tea.

  "Would the countess mind," the brigadier's wife asked, "if I ordered the blend for myself? I think I shall go off Lady Londonderry's altogether!"

  He was about to reply when she went hurriedly on: "I have a small gift for Lady Rose in return. I finally received my order of Belgian embroidery floss. I sent off for it nearly a year ago! And there is the most delicious green that I know will go perfectly into her tapestry."

  Back in April, wanting to give Rose a treat and a rest from the tent camp, Valentine had taken her on safari up the slopes of nearby Mount Kenya. He had tried to make the traveling as gentle as possible for her, rigging a hammock between two poles and having her carried in it by Africans, and she had responded by falling in love with the rain forest. In fact, she had been so taken with it that she had returned to the plantation with the scene perfectly imprinted on her brain. Rose had immediately taken a length of Irish linen from her cedar chest, unpacked her needles and yarns from a trunk, and launched upon what was promising to be a most impressive tapestry. It was only embryonic now, but one could already see how skillfully the rain forest was going to translate onto the linen: the rich shades of green dotted with bright orange and yellow and blue wildflowers; the long, ropy vines that hung from damp, twisted trees; the emerald moss and giant ferns and elephant's ear palms; even the low-hanging mountain mist had been outlined in delicate pearl blue silk thread, and off to the side Rose was leaving a space where an imaginary golden-eyed leopard would lurk.

  This was what she did with her time. Stitching the tapestry was all she did. She sat in the little glade that was at the center of the eucalyptus trees, in the protection of a gazebo which Valentine had built for her, sheltered from the tropical sun in the company of pet monkeys and parrots and Mrs. Pembroke with baby Mona.

  "Can we offer you a shakedown for the night, Lord Treverton?" Lady Margaret asked. With such great distances between neighbors and hotels nearly nonexistent, the strenuous travel in British East Africa had produced the custom of providing shelter for overnight guests, friend or stranger.

  But Valentine was in a hurry. There were two things he must see to in Nairobi—Dr. Hare and arranging Rose's "surprise"—and then he would be striking northward, for home.

  8

  T

  HERE IS ONE POSSIBLE CAUSE FOR YOUR WIFE'S RELUCTANCE, Your Lordship. The medical term for it is dyspareunia. It means"—Dr. Hare tapped his pen on the desktop—"ah . . . the woman experiences pain during sexual intercourse. Does Lady Rose have pain?"

  Valentine regarded the physician with a blank expression. Pain? He had not thought of that. Was it possible? Was that why she shied away from his embrace? Did she feel pain? Valentine sat back in the chair, oblivious of the glorious Sunday sunlight slanting through the window and illuminating Dr. Hare's cramped office. Grace hadn't said anything to him about Rose's having pain. She had been delicate in her wording, mentioning the strain of Mona's birth, the awkward train car, the lack of proper facilities.

  Valentine experienced a sudden rush of hope. Could that be the answer? Could it be that simple? That Rose was afraid of pain? Because if that were the case, if it were due to a physical problem and not, as he had feared, a problem with their relationship, then surely help could be found!

  "What causes the pain, Dr. Hare?"


  The man shrugged. "I need to examine your wife to determine that."

  Valentine would have to think about that. It had not been easy for him to come to this man; how could he subject Rose to a stranger's examination? Valentine had chosen Dr. Hare because the few medical men in East Africa were part of the "crowd" and gossip risk was high. Dr. Hare was new, just out from America, and not yet given to talk.

  "She had a baby seven months ago," Valentine said. He would not allow himself to remember that Rose's reluctance had begun long before Mona's birth; he did not see that he was grasping at straws.

  "That could be the cause," the doctor said, studying the earl's face. He saw fear on it, plain as day, and worry. Dr. Hare had engaged in many such private consultations during his twenty years of medical practice. They were all the same, like textbook chapters: wife unresponsive or even resistant to sexual advances; husband plunged into morass of self-criticism and sudden doubts about manhood.

  Hogwash, Dr. Hare wanted to say. Women these days! With their talk of birth control and the vote. Why were they so set on denying their one purpose on this earth—to bear children? They made such a fuss of it, giving birth, when that was the very thing they were created for!

  "Can you do anything for her?" Valentine asked, praying that the answer would be simple.

  The doctor began scribbling on a pad. He would like to tell the earl what he would do if it were his own wife: exercise his legal right as a husband and ignore her protests. Instead, Dr. Hare said, "I prescribe a mild bromide. It will relax her. Most of these cases stem from tension in the, ah, pelvis. Usually a dose or two of this will clear up the problem." He snapped off the page and handed it to Valentine.

  When Valentine emerged from the clapboard and corrugated tin building and paused to shield his eyes from the bright equatorial sun, he drew in a deep breath. He felt like shouting for joy.

  He drank in the unique light of East Africa, a lumination that, for Valentine, sharpened outlines, details, and colors. Because of the altitude, the fact that Nairobi was five thousand feet above sea level, the air was crystal pure; no industrial pollution soiled it, and the few motorcars that rattled along Nairobi's dirt streets coughed negligible fumes.

  When Valentine had first arrived with the 25th Royal Fusiliers, to fight the Germans down near the border, he had been spellbound by the light. It was not only bright, he had realized, but light in the sense of having no weight. Luminosity, he decided, could have density, like any object. The sunlight of England, for instance, was bogged down by smoke, river mists, fog, and salt air from the sea, but the sunlight of British East Africa was unsullied and buoyant, weightless, lending an almost supernatural crispness to shapes and textures. Even the most mundane object took on a certain glory. The grizzled old prospectors on their bony donkeys, the dusty black Africans whiling away the noon, and the prosaic old wood and tin buildings, weathered and coated with grime—all seemed washed in an inexplicable splendor.

  Valentine Treverton loved Nairobi. Having once been blinded by the light of this infant town in the sun, he knew he could never live in England again.

  But there was more to Nairobi than its light. It was a living, breathing, pulsating town with, Valentine was certain, a brilliant future. Although the end of the war had sent the king's troops home, ending the four-year boom, a new wave of fresh population now washed up on East Africa's shores—exmilitary men flocking to the Highlands with land grants from the Crown, under the new Soldier Settlement Scheme; Boers from South Africa in their covered wagons and long mule trains; shifty-eyed hustlers and their counterpart suckers all looking for a quick way to make money; the turbaned Indians with their dusky wives and parade of children trailing behind; the white settler who came to make a new life; the strutting young officials in clean, pressed khaki uniforms, wearing big cork helmets with shiny badges in front and long, sweeping rear brims like otters' tails—and finally, in the middle of them all, serene and of blank expression, with seemingly nothing more to do than squat in the dust and stare, was the African, who had been here long before the others had even thought of coming.

  Nairobi was a rough place where nearly every man carried a gun, where fires were constantly breaking out, where the Indian bazaar was overcrowded and filthy and the source of epidemics. It was a crude town crowded with oxcarts, riders on horseback, rickshas, and the occasional Model T. And it was the only town where Valentine, the earl of Treverton, felt he truly belonged.

  As he took a cheroot out of his shirt pocket and lit it, wondering where he was going to find a duka la dawa, a druggist's shop, open on a Sunday, Valentine watched a safari column muster on the street.

  It was one of the old-fashioned variety that was slowly being replaced by the automobile and would soon vanish from East Africa. A hundred natives were receiving their loads. In less than an hour the column would file out of Nairobi like a black centipede; at the rear the professional white hunter and his sweating millionaire clients would follow. The porters carried their loads on their heads because to carry them on their backs would be humiliating; that was the way women carried things. And there was a limit to the weight of their loads: 60 pounds. There was even a limit to the amount a donkey could carry: 120 pounds. But for an African woman there was no restriction on the weight of her load.

  As Valentine turned and headed down the street toward the King Edward Hotel, he thought how amazing it was to remember that fifteen years ago there had been nothing here but tents and a swamp. And before that, just an insignificant river and some scattered Masai. Nairobi had been born just a few years after Valentine was; he was certain they would grow old together.

  MIRANDA WEST PUT down her spoon, wiped her hands on her apron, and went to the window and looked out. Lord Treverton had said he would be stopping by today before heading back north to his plantation.

  She was in the kitchen of her small hotel, getting ready for Sunday afternoon tea, a project that took almost the whole afternoon because of the care and quality she put into her preparations. Miranda West enjoyed a good reputation as far away as Uganda, and many were the settlers who came miles by oxcart to sit at one of her tables. Today she would be filled to capacity again, serving on the veranda and even out on the street. If the earl did not come soon, she would not have a chance to be alone with him. And that was all Miranda West lived for.

  The dreams and ambitions of East Africa were as numerous as the immigrants who brought them. Everyone arrived with a scheme. Whether it was to make money in farming, to make money in mining, to make money in elephant ivory, to make money performing some special service for others, the idea was always to make money. There was no end to the variety and ingenuity of the schemes. For example, the Irish twins Paddy and Sean had made a brief fortune raising ostriches to fill the demand for plumes in England and America. And then, just like that, the automobile became popular and women couldn't wear big, feathery hats while motoring and so the fashion changed to tight-fitting caps, and Paddy and Sean had to return their worthless birds to the wild. Then there was Ralph Sneed, who had bragged up a storm about the mint he was going to make growing almonds in the Rift Valley. He had spent very cent of his savings on buying and planting almond trees only to discover that because of the absence of seasons in East Africa, the trees bloomed all year round and never came to fruit. Ralph Sneed had gone back to South Africa, embarrassed and penniless. Finally, there was Miranda's own feckless husband, Jack West, who was last seen heading off with a sleeping bag, a change of clothes, and a bottle of quinine—going to Lake Victoria, he had said, to find hippo skeletons and pulverize them into bone meal fertilizer, which he was going to sell to farmers at a phenomenal profit. That had been six years ago, and Jack hadn't been seen since.

  So everybody in Nairobi had a plan. Miranda West's had, until now, been to capitalize on homesickness.

  Back in 1913 Miranda Pemberton had responded to an advertisement in a Manchester newspaper. The ad had been placed by a gentleman currently res
iding in British East Africa who was looking for a well-placed woman to marry and help him in his various "ventures of a financially promising nature." Miranda, a general cook and maid of all work to a penny pincher in Lancashire, England, had written at once on a bit of fancy notepaper stolen from her employer. She shaved five years off her age and tripled the figure in her bank account. The advertiser, a prospector named Jack West, had chosen her letter out of sixty and had sent her the fare to come out.

  He had met her at the harbor at Mombasa, where, after experiencing an initial shock—he was shorter and younger than she—they decided they might as well get married and make a go at it.

  But the enterprise had failed. Miranda was appalled at the sight of ragtag Nairobi and the tent her new husband expected her to live in, and Jack felt cheated when she turned over her small savings. They struggled for a few months, trying to earn a living by buying produce from local Africans and selling it at a profit to wealthy parties getting outfitted for hunting safaris, until Jack took off in the middle of the night with the last of their money and Miranda's fake jade earrings.

  By great good luck Miranda heard of a Scotsman named Kinney who needed a European woman to "help around" his boardinghouse near the railway station, and while he actually meant she would do all the work, it was at least a roof over her head and ten rupees a month. Miranda's advantage lay in her white skin, which was why Kinney had hired her. He catered to a middle-class immigrant clientele that stayed in his house while looking for prospects or waiting for farm deeds to come from the Land Office. The wives of his boarders liked having a white maid instead of an African one, and when she demonstrated a skill for baking scones and concocting English trifle, for which his homesick settlers paid a high price, Miranda became indispensable.