by Paula McLain
When we arrived, Denys and Berkeley were camped out with cocktails by the fire. Apparently they’d turned up in the middle of the night having hacked from Gilgil in the dark after their car broke down. Karen had stayed at Mbogani.
“We tried to mend the springs with rawhide first,” Berkeley explained, “but it was too dark to see anything. Finally we loaded ourselves down with the ducks and got on with it.”
“Fifty pounds of duck,” Denys said.
“It’s a damned miracle you weren’t set on by lions,” D said.
“That’s what I was thinking,” Berkeley said, “or trying not to.”
As Denys said hello to us, he kissed me on the cheek. “You look well, Beryl.”
“Doesn’t she?” Berkeley said.
“Berkeley has a special sense about what women need to hear,” Galbraith’s wife, Nell, said. She was small and dark in the way Karen was, but without the powder and kohl, or the sharp intelligence.
“Beryl already knows she’s beautiful,” Denys said. “She was beautiful when she looked in her glass this morning. What could possibly have changed?”
“Don’t be difficult, Denys,” Nell chided. “All women like a little flattery from time to time.”
“What if they didn’t? What if they simply liked themselves and no one needed to bend backwards to flatter them? Wouldn’t it all be simpler then?”
“We’re only talking about compliments, Denys,” Berkeley said. “Don’t be so dramatic.”
“I see his point,” I said. “And honestly, how far will beauty get you anyway? What about strength? Or courage?”
“Oh dear.” Berkeley laughed to Nell. “Now they’re ganging up on me.”
In the dining room, Nell had set up lines of filled champagne flutes. I drank a glass down quickly, feeling the bubbles sting my nose, and then took two back to Berkeley and Denys. “Champagne is absolutely compulsory in Africa,” I said in my best impression of Berkeley.
He laughed, his eyes crinkling. “And all this time I thought I was talking to myself.”
I shook my head. “Happy Christmas.”
“Happy Christmas, Diana,” Denys said softly, and the word flickered through me like a living thing.
—
For dinner, a suckling pig had been roasted over smoked wood, and there were other delicacies I hadn’t seen in ages—cranberry relish and roasted chestnuts and Yorkshire pudding. I sat across from Denys, who couldn’t seem to stop eating.
“I’ve got a special permit for ivory and will be three months out on safari after the New Year,” he said. “I might line my pockets with these chestnuts.”
“Poor Denys,” D said.
“Poor Denys nothing. He’s going to make a fortune,” Berkeley said.
“Where are you headed this time?” I asked.
“To Tanganyika.”
D said, “That’s Masai territory.”
“Yes. Not much there in the way of roads, but the game should be good if my lorry holds out.”
“You might pack the rawhide, just in case,” I suggested.
“Ha. Yes. I’ll do that.” And then he filled his plate again.
There were games after dinner and then smoking by the fire, and then brandy—all of it moving at two different speeds for me, stretching out like something frozen, and also half gone already. I couldn’t properly explain it, even to myself, but I couldn’t imagine leaving or missing the slightest opportunity to be near Denys. Something was gathering in me, pushing up from under my skin—a feeling I couldn’t name.
When D got ready to leave I had three different excuses for why I had to stay. I don’t think he believed any of them, but he fetched his hat and said his good nights, giving me only a last dubious look before heading off into the night. I’m not doing anything rash, I wanted to tell him, but of course that wasn’t true.
It was rash to sit alone with Denys by the hearth after everyone had gone to bed, and to puzzle over how to get closer to him when he belonged to Karen. Rash and wrong, and yet it was all I could think about. A pair of charred logs smouldered in the grate. Reddish light caught the strong planes and ridges of his hands in a mesmerizing way.
“You talk about safaris as if something essential can be found there,” I told him. “Maybe only there. I used to feel that way about my father’s farm, near Njoro.”
“Beautiful country.”
“The very best.”
“When I first started the safaris, you know, there weren’t any lorries. The porters carried everything, and you had to cut your way through with a machete. There were grisly stories, too…about hunters and gun bearers being skewered or gored. One had his face taken off by the horn of a threatened buffalo. Another startled a lion up by Longonot and had his stomach ripped clean out. Everything was wilder, and the land was, too. Going out felt like gambling against a well-stacked deck.”
“You can’t really be wistful about gorings?” I smiled, and when he smiled back, the skin around his eyes creased and his lips curved higher on one side. I was beginning to be an expert on his face. I could have closed my eyes then and seen all of him just as clearly.
“The last time I went out, the client wanted four different kinds of wine at every meal. We had an icebox bumping along with us, too, and bearskin rugs.”
“I wouldn’t want any of that, just the stars, thank you very much.”
“That’s what I mean. If a client wants to be out in the bush, at least he should try and feel it. See it for what it really is. He wants the trophy, but what is it a sign of if he hasn’t even really been there?”
“Will you take me out sometime? I want to see it…before it’s all gone.”
“All right. I think you’d understand it.”
“I think I would, too.”
Galbraith’s pet serval cat came along looking for scraps or a good scratch. It rolled on the floor at Denys’s feet, revealing the pale spotted ruff along its belly. The fire was almost cold now, and the night was slipping away. Denys stood up and stretched broadly, and I spoke quickly, on pure instinct.
“Can I stay with you?”
“Is that a good idea?” I’d caught him by surprise. “I thought you and Tania were becoming friends.”
“I don’t see what one has got to do with the other.” It wasn’t the truth, but I didn’t know how to say what I really felt, that I wanted this night with him. One night, and then I would forget any hope of him for good. “We’re friends, too, aren’t we?”
His eyes met and held mine, and as blithe as I was being—or trying to be—I felt his look in my gut, turning everything inside out. I stood up. We were just a foot away from each other, and he reached out to touch my chin with the tip of his finger. Then, without answering me, he turned and walked down the hall towards his room. I followed him a few minutes later, and when I did, everything was so black I had to inch through the door he’d left open. I could feel the wooden boards under my bare feet, smooth and soundless, and how the cottony dark was like its own sort of animal all around me. Neither of us spoke or made a noise, but I sensed where he was and moved in that direction. Step by step I found him, feeling my way.
When I woke it was impossibly dark. Denys was next to me. His breath was still and even, and as my eyes adjusted, I could make out the long curve of his hip, one leg loosely thrown over the other. I had imagined our being together before—the crush of his arms and how he would taste—but I’d never worked out how it might be after, what we would say to each other, how it would change the way we were, or not. How stupid that was. I was in real trouble now, I realized.
He opened his eyes as I lay watching him. Everything stopped whirling for a moment and stood stock-still. He didn’t blink or look away, and when he reached to pull me beneath him his movements were slow and deliberate. The first time had been rushed, as if neither of us wanted a moment to breathe or consider what we were setting into motion. Now time stopped completely and we stopped with it. The house was quiet. The night beyond the
window had hushed itself as well, and there was only the fact of our two bodies rippled with shadow. We pressed to get closer, to push through something—but even then, I didn’t think, This is the love that will change my life. I didn’t think, I don’t belong to myself any more. I only kissed him, dissolving, and it was done.
—
When Denys fell asleep again, I dressed without a sound, slipping out of the house and down to Galbraith’s stables to borrow a horse. The horse might take a little explaining the next day, I knew, but not as much as my face when I wouldn’t be able to hide what had happened. The pony was a sure-footed Arab, and though it was dark when we set out, I wasn’t afraid. Within a few miles, pale light began to thicken to the east and then the sun rose clean and sharp, the same intense colour as the flamingos resting in the shallows of Elmenteita. As I came nearer the water’s edge, I could see them beginning to stir as a group, as if they were all knitted together beneath the surface. When they fed, they fed in twos and threes, sieving the muddy water for one another, pulling along in S-shaped wading strides.
I’d seen this same picture hundreds of times, but today it seemed to mean something else. The lake was as still as a skin, as if this were the first morning of the world. I stopped to let the pony drink his fill, and when I mounted again I clucked him from a walk into a canter, and the flamingos rose and turned like a tide. They swept one way over the rim of the lake, all pale bellies and furled wings, and then twisted back as a single body, a gyration of colour that swept me up inside it. I had been sleeping, I realized. Since the moment my father had told me the farm was finished, I’d been asleep or on the run or both. Now, there was sun on the water and the sound of a thousand flamingos beating the air. I didn’t know what would happen now. How it would be with Denys and Karen, or how all these snarled feelings inside me would be set to rights. I had no earthly idea of any of it, but at least I was awake now. At least there was that.
—
Four days later, D threw a New Year’s party at a hotel he owned in Nakuru. Everyone came dressed in his or her very finest to ring out 1923 with bright paper horns and bring 1924 down from the place it waited, the newness of it like a length of unmarked cloth. The band members were promised caviar and all the champagne they could guzzle if they would play until dawn. The small parquet dance floor was a riotous mass of swinging arms and legs.
“How’s your heart these days?” I asked Berkeley when we danced. He wore a bright red Christmas tie, but there were dark smudges beneath his eyes, and his skin was ashy.
“A little battered, but still ticking. How’s yours?”
“About the same, actually.”
We waltzed past a table where Denys and Karen sat talking, he in a brilliant-white suit, and she in yards of black taffeta that bared her pale shoulders. It made my chest hurt to look at them. I hadn’t spoken to or even seen Denys since I had crept from his bed like a thief. I hadn’t been in touch with Karen since her shooting party and didn’t know how I would begin to behave normally with either of them. Normal was gone for good now.
When the song had finished, I excused myself to find a drink. It took me ages to push my way through to the bar, and by the time I had, Karen was there already. Her long ebony cigarette holder sculpted the space between us.
“Happy New Year, Beryl.”
“Happy New Year.” I leaned to kiss her on the cheek. Guilt surged through me in small waves. “How are you?”
“Up to my neck. My shareholders want me to sell the farm.”
“Are things really that bad?”
“Nearly always.” Her teeth clicked on the ebony holder as she pulled in smoke, releasing it slowly, revealing nothing. That was Karen. Her words were so full they made you think you knew everything about her, but it was a magician’s trick. The truth was she kept her secrets closest when she said them outright.
I said, “Having Denys around must help.” I was struggling to be natural.
“Yes, it means everything to me. Do you know I die a little whenever he goes away?”
I felt my chest tighten. Her poetic flair was the same as ever, but something in her tone made me wonder if she was warning me somehow, or staking her claim. I watched the angles of her cheekbones through the quivering smoke, thinking of how good she was at reading people. I was “the child” to her, but it was possible she sensed what had changed. That she tasted it on the air.
“Can you convince your shareholders to give you one last chance?”
“I’ve had it already. Twice, actually—but I’ll have to do something. I might marry for instance.”
“Aren’t you still married?” I managed.
“Of course. I’m just thinking ahead.” She looked down her angular nose at me. “Or perhaps I’ll give up everything and move away to China, or Marseilles.”
“You don’t really mean that.”
“Sometimes…it’s a fantasy I have of beginning again. Surely you have one, too.”
“Of leaving Kenya? I’ve never thought of that. I wouldn’t be the same anywhere else.”
“You might change your mind one day, though. If you’re hurting enough.” She fixed me with one of her looks, her eyes arrowing through me, and then she moved away.
For the next few hours I stood along the wall behind the band, piecing over what Karen had said and wondering if she knew what had happened with Denys. He certainly wouldn’t risk coming over to talk to me, but part of me was glad of that. I wasn’t sure what I would say to him, or what I even wanted. Everywhere I looked, complex pairings came together and slid apart again, like characters in a melodrama. Lives tumbled. They changed in an instant…that’s how quickly something could be newly begun, or finished for ever. Every now and then, those things didn’t look so very different on the surface. They both cost a great deal, too.
It was nearly dawn when I left the Nakuru Hotel with D and Boy Long. I walked between them, relieved the night was finally over. I had only come face-to-face with Denys once that evening, in a moment at the bar when our gazes had clicked and locked. Then Karen had put a hand on his shoulder, and he’d turned round, and that was that. Now I was deflated and bleary-eyed. That’s probably why I didn’t realize what was happening at first. How Jock appeared from nowhere and began lurching towards us from across the street, calling out words I couldn’t understand. It jolted me even to see him.
“You were supposed to look out for her,” he slurred at D. His eyes were wild, not quite focused on anything.
I felt Boy flare beside me. He made as if to charge Jock, but D stepped forward first, saying, “Let’s talk like men and get you settled down.”
“I won’t be made a fool of,” Jock spat, and before anyone could say another word, he sent one arm wildly through the air at D, landing just shy of him, while my blood went icy and thick. Somehow he’d learned about Denys—that’s all I could think.
D ducked backwards, nearly losing his balance. I could tell he was rattled and probably panicked, too. Boy had had enough by then and made a move to grab Jock’s arm, but Jock erupted, stepping out of Boy’s reach and swinging out wide again. This time, his fist caught D on the chin with a sickening wallop. D staggered and went down on one knee, as if all the air had left his body. Boy scrambled for Jock, but he was windmilling punches now, bellowing something about getting satisfaction.
But even if my being with Denys had come to light, what did that have to do with D? Why on earth go after an old man, and an innocent one? Nothing made any sense, and Jock was so drunk he’d become wooden—flailing and rawboned and wild.
“Stop it!” I screamed. “It’s D. D! Stop!” I pulled at him from behind, slamming into his back with my fists, but he threw me off easily. I landed hard and scrambled up again.
D had fallen to his side on the ground and lay crumpled there, his arms cradling his head, while Jock went after him again. Everything was happening so fast. “Stop, stop it!” I kept crying out, suddenly terrified that Jock would kill him.
I
screamed at Boy to get help from the hotel, and he finally ran out with a handful of men who wedged themselves between Jock and D. They pinned Jock to one side of the building where he strained against their grip, his face purple with rage.
“You selfish bitch,” he spat at me. “You thought you could rut around like a dirty whore and I wouldn’t find out? That I wouldn’t fight back?” With a great push, he flung off the arms of the men and then staggered away at a run, down the street and into the dark.
D was a ruin. We got him to the infirmary somehow, his eye sealing up by the moment, his mouth and nose dripping blood. A surgeon was called out of bed to treat him, and Boy and I sat for hours waiting as stitches were sewn and plaster applied. His arm had been fractured in three places, his neck sprained, and his jaw broken. When the surgeon described the extent of D’s injuries, I buried my face in my hands, overcome with shame. My recklessness had lit the fuse in Jock. I should have known what he was capable of. This was all my fault.
“Will he be all right?” I asked the surgeon.
“With time. We’ll keep him here for several weeks at least, I’d say, and once he’s home he’ll require a nurse.”
“Anything he needs,” Boy assured him.
When the surgeon had gone, I thought of Jock bolting off into the night and how he might get off scot-free. “We should go to the authorities anyway,” I told Boy.
“D doesn’t want this out in the open. He’s protecting you…both of us, probably, but also himself. How would it look for the Vigilance Committee to have him seem so vulnerable to attack?”