Circling the Sun

by Paula McLain

  Several times each day I traced the curving stone wall slowly, all the way down the hill to the hedgerow and back again, trying to right myself, and yet stuck on the same difficult thoughts. Denys would never know this terrible secret, that I had carried his child. Karen wouldn’t either, and yet we were all stitched together so deeply now, and in such a complex pattern, that I couldn’t clear my mind of either of them. The light in Dorking was dappled, not piercing. There were goshawks cresting over the plane tree, not Ngong’s magnificent eagles—but at the centre of my mind and my heart as well, I spent a good part of every day travelling home.

  Strangely, the newspapers were full of Kenya, too. No matter how aggressively D’s Vigilance Committee and others like it had fought, the Devonshire White Paper had taken full hold, and rumblings of African rights were growing louder. As for the Asiatics, it was now being touted that they might one day be counted in the electoral role and own land in the highlands. These were new and threatening sentiments on the wind, and though none of it would resolve at any time soon, even the notion of such change was shocking.

  “You know,” Cockie remarked when she took the train out to visit me at the end of May, “The Times goes on and on about how greedy we settlers are, how we’ve muddied up the colony they gave us and overrun everything. But they also have to print a map of Kenya every time they run a story. Otherwise, Londoners might not know it actually exists.” She flipped the paper closed.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, feeling numb. “No one can parcel up Africa or even defend it. It doesn’t belong to anyone.”

  “Except the Africans, you mean.”

  “More than anyone else, I suppose. Or maybe we’re all daft to think we can own even a stitch of it.”

  “Will you go home again? Is that what’s on your mind today?”

  “How?” I looked off across the meadow, where a goshawk moved slowly and beautifully in a flat plane, gliding along without seeming to move even a muscle. “If I had wings, maybe.”

  The stone wall that cut the rich green field was knee high and derelict in that English country way meant to be charming, toppled in places and crawling with mosses. I stood and walked slowly, tugging at a nest of dead leaves and crushing them to powder in my hands. That one night with Denys, at Kekopey, he had been tender with me and absolutely real. He’d looked into my eyes, and I had felt that he saw who and what I was at my centre. I understood him, too, that was the thing—and knew he couldn’t ever belong to anyone. But that didn’t help me now. My heart had been battered and kicked, and I didn’t hold out hope that anything would offer a cure, anything except going home. I had to find a way.

  In a little while, Cockie moved through the meadow to join me. Quietly, she sat on the edge of the wall.

  “How did you ever get the money?” I asked her. “For the doctor.”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I’m not sure. Tell me.”

  “Frank Greswolde.”

  “Frank?” He was an old friend from the colony—another horse owner my father had known well when I was a girl. Cockie and I had seen him the month before at a party in London, along with an entire clutch of London’s showier well-to-do. He hadn’t seemed all that interested in me, except to see how Clutt was—and I had no idea how he was.

  “Frank has a good heart.”

  “He has deep pockets, you mean.”

  “Honestly, Beryl. A man can have both. When I told him—very discreetly—how in need you were, he insisted on helping.”

  “So this is what you meant by sponsor. What does he expect in return?”

  “I don’t think he has any ulterior motives. He probably only wants to go around with you when you’re feeling up to it. There’s nothing terribly wrong with that.”

  For her there wasn’t; that was obvious—but I hated even the idea of being obligated to a benefactor, no matter what stripe or what he wanted in return. I wouldn’t need anything, not if I could help it. I also didn’t see another way, not immediately. “Let’s go back to London then,” I said. “I want to get on with it.”

  “Don’t get Frank wrong, darling. I’m sure you can do whatever you like with him, or nothing.”

  “It doesn’t matter in any case,” I told her. “I’ve nothing left to lose.”

  The port of Mombasa was a snarled and fabulous thing, full of cargo vessels and fishing dinghies, their flat decks hung with curled, drying shark meat or buckets of eels. The arcing seafront pulsed with heat and trolleys and droves of oxen. Pink and yellow bungalows climbed the slopes of low hills, their pale-green tin roofs sharp against the colour of fat baobab trees, which were nearly purple. The smell of fish and dust and dung throbbed in the air like a loving assault as I leaned into the railing, watching my home country get nearer and wider, clearer and wilder. Around my neck rested a fat and glossy string of pearls. I wore a white silk dress that cut me right everywhere. Near my hand on the rail rested Frank’s hand. It had a right to be there. I had become his girl.

  “Should we stay in Mombasa for a few days?” Frank asked. “Or drive down the coast?” He stood next to me, his large belly touching the white painted railing. A porter had brought us each a glass of wine. He sipped his and faced me, so that I could see the puckering scar under his right eye, below a dark eye patch. He’d lost that eye shooting several years before, and though it gave him a hardened look, he wasn’t hard. At least not to me.

  “I’m ready for home,” I told him.

  “I suppose all the rumpus has died down. It’s been six months.”

  “That’s a lifetime in the colony,” I said, and hoped I was right.

  A gold ring sat on one of Frank’s pinkie fingers, squat and square with a watery blue beryl stone. He’d got it in London and been excited to show me. “Pure beryl is colourless,” he’d said then, “but this was the prettiest.”

  “It’s like the African sky.”

  “So are you,” he said.

  But if Frank’s words flared with romance, they didn’t move me half as much as his loyalty did. That mattered more than anything—and also his belief in me. What I wished most for myself—to be back in Kenya and working—was what he wanted for me. From the moment Cockie had helped bring us together, Frank hadn’t done anything but insist he could set me up with a stable full of horses. I could train for myself, beholden to no one, he promised, and so far he’d been true to his word. Before nightfall we would board a train that would take us to Nairobi. Then we would motor to Knightswick, Frank’s cattle ranch at the base of the Mau Escarpment. There, I could begin to work and train again.

  “Are you happy?” Frank asked as the ship eased into the harbour. It was a leviathan surrounded by bits of flotsam and colour and noise—the cacophony of Mombasa, curved palms and red sand, a high and pale-blue sky. The stevedores threw out the long ropes to the mooring, each gnarled length as thick as a man’s leg.

  “I am. You know, even the smells of home make me feel more like myself. The colours, too. If only I didn’t have to see anyone, I think I’d be as right as rain already.”

  “We could head straight for Knightswick.”

  “That feels cowardly. Just stay nearby, will you?”

  “Of course,” he said, and squeezed my hand.

  —

  Two days later, we roared into Nairobi in Frank’s Ford Runabout. The town looked the same as it had when I left—red dust streets lined with tin-roofed shops and cafés, wagons loaded down with supplies, pale-green eucalyptus trees soaring up on slim, shedding trunks, their leaves quaking in a light breeze.

  Through the low pink gate of the Muthaiga Club, the drive curved along a stretch of manicured green turf. We pulled into the portico, and a white-gloved porter moved to open my door. My foot slid out gracefully in its lovely shoe. My dress and stockings and hat were all nicer than anything I’d ever worn at the club, and I felt that keenly as we moved through the shade-darkened foyer. Frank had one proprietary hand on my elbow and was steering me towar
ds the bar as if I hadn’t been there hundreds of times. Maybe I hadn’t been. I’d shed at least one skin since I’d left for London and maybe more.

  “Let’s see who’s about,” Frank said. He meant his friends. I didn’t know much about them except by way of gossip, and there was plenty of that. They were all of the Happy Valley set, the beautiful rich who hoisted themselves up on vast parcels of land near Gilgil and Nyeri, where they could frolic or play at farming with little heed to the rules or civilities that governed others. They had their own rules, or none at all—which could happen when you had too much money and too much time. They entertained themselves by borrowing one another’s husbands and wives and by smoking pounds of opium. Every now and again, one would turn up in Nairobi half-naked and delirious.

  Frank wasn’t quite of that world, because he wasn’t refined enough—if that was the right word. He talked like a sailor and walked with a limp. As I saw it, the very rich kept him around because he knew where to find the best cocaine. He carried some with him always in a brown velvet bag. I had seen it come out in London once or twice, though I never touched it. I wasn’t curious about drugs at all. Even the idea of not having my wits about me made me feel too vulnerable. Frank respected that and didn’t try to change my mind or make me feel puritanical—at least in London. I wondered if things would be otherwise now.

  It was the middle of the afternoon. Glossy wooden blinds were closed against the heat, making everything dark and slightly damp-feeling, cavelike. Frank surveyed the room like a prospector but saw no one he knew. We had a drink anyway, quietly, keeping to ourselves, and then he took himself back into town, seeing to his affairs, while I set myself up in one corner of the dining room and had lunch and coffee. I’d let him go because no one had even tried to approach me or even seemed to recognize me in my new clothes. I began to feel I really had changed into someone else until Karen came in in a broad white hat and coloured scarf. She looked me over, passing through, and then stopped dead. “Beryl. It’s you. You’ve come back.”

  I lay my napkin aside and stood to kiss her. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  “No, no.” She blinked like an exotic cat. “I only wondered how. Everything seemed so hopeless when you left.”

  “It was.” I cleared my throat and made myself meet her eyes. “I hope to never be that low again, actually. How’s D?”

  “Fully recovered—and irascible as ever. You know him.”

  “Yes…I hope I do still. Six months is long enough for smoke to clear, but also for a divide to stretch and grow. I miss him.”

  “No doubt he misses you, too.” Her eyes dropped to my pearls and then to my fine new shoes. I could see she was full of questions about how altered I was, but I doubted she would ask them.

  “Stay and have a drink with me.”

  “All right.” She sat down and removed her hat, smoothing her hair, which had been cut in a shingle, the new liberated style. I’d seen it everywhere in London but had never thought Karen would bend to the moment’s fashion. “Isn’t it terrible?” She laughed. “I’m not sure why I did it.” Then her expression changed, and she said, “What’s happened with your divorce? Are you finally free?”

  “Not yet.” Cockie had urged me to write to Jock from Dorking, insisting on a divorce, but I hadn’t yet heard anything back from him. “Did Jock face charges here?”

  “Not for that.” She looked serious, doubting.

  “What then?”

  “There was another incident recently. No one witnessed it, so it’s difficult to know what actually happened, but Jock apparently ran his auto into another car in Nakuru. Then he went after the couple inside, as if it were their fault instead of his. Both cars caught fire.”

  “My God, was anyone hurt?”

  “Thankfully, no. They held a trial for damages, but nothing was decided.”

  “No doubt he was drunk.”

  “One can only assume.” She plucked at the end of her scarf seeming embarrassed, and we sat silently for several strained minutes. Then she said, “You really do look well, Beryl. If I ever paint you, you should wear white. It’s very much your colour.”

  In my hand, my cocktail glass was cool and smooth. Flecks of foamed gin and egg white clung to the chipped ice. I had fled to get away from scandal, but it was still here, lying in wait. There were many other still-unsettled things, a web of difficult truths that hadn’t been spoken and wouldn’t be sorted. And yet I was glad to see Karen again. I had missed her company.

  “Did everything turn out all right?” Frank asked when he returned. Karen and I had already said our farewells.

  “I suppose so. But being in town does make me wary. It can’t be long before gossip about us starts to burn through the outposts.”

  “There was gossip in London, too. People love to talk rot. They can’t help themselves.”

  “Well, I’m sick of it.” My gin was long gone. I stirred the dregs of it in my glass. “ ‘I think I could turn and live with animals,’ ” I said quietly.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing…just some poetry I heard once.” He shrugged and I pushed at the edge of the table with resolve. “I’m ready. Take me home.”

  Frank didn’t have much of an interest in farming and hired out crop work so that he could spend his time shooting or visiting friends. His hunting cabin was ten miles from the main house at Knightswick, in the Kedong Valley. He slept there most nights with his tracker, Bogo, returning to see me every few days. We’d have lunch or dinner, and then he’d lead me to the bedroom. After he watched me undress, he’d stretch me out on the bed. He loved to hear my breath catch, to see and feel my hips moving, my hands clutching the sheets. He seemed to enjoy giving me pleasure even more than he wanted release for himself, and I guessed it made him feel as if he were taking care of me. He was, in his way.

  Frank never forced himself on me, but still I can’t say I was ever attracted to him. He walked in an awkward, rolling way, like a trained bear, with squat square hands and feet, and his belly was round and taut as a drum. At dinner, his talk was coarse and gruff, but he never failed to ask me how I was feeling and what I’d been doing and thinking about. He’d tell me stories of the hunting he’d done or the rides he’d taken. He never asked me to accompany him when he went away, and that was fine with me. It was more than enough to have his company intermittently. When we had sex, I saw it as a kind of physical transaction. We were giving something to each other, even if it wasn’t exactly affection. I squeezed my eyes shut, or trained them on the curled grey hairs on his chest, and tried not to think that he was as old as my father. He was kind. He cared about me. He wouldn’t give up on me.

  In the bureau in Frank’s bedroom stood a pile of currency he had earmarked for me to buy horses, or whatever I liked. I often opened the drawer and looked at the stack of bills, feeling strangely removed from the world of commerce, where shillings made things happen. I’d been so broke for so long that I should have leapt at the chance, but I didn’t. I was grateful to Frank and trusted that he meant well, and I wanted to be deeply engaged in training again more than I could say. But I wasn’t ready for anything permanent with him, not yet. Something simply didn’t feel right—so I rode Pegasus on my own or walked in the grounds in a pair of printed silk pyjamas that Frank had bought for me in Nairobi. His friend Idina Hay wore hers everywhere, even to town, and he thought I should look just as glamorous and indolent.

  When we went to visit Idina at Slains, her estate near Gilgil, he begged me to wear them, swearing I’d feel more at home like that, but I put on the white silk dress instead, the one that Karen had told me was my colour, and stockings and heels and the pearls we’d found in a shop in Belgravia not long after Frank came into my life. I suppose I wanted Idina and her friends to see me as respectable, though I don’t know why I cared.

  We turned up at Slains on a hot afternoon in July. The estate sat like a rough-cut jewel on two thousand acres in the hills above Gilgil, right at the foo
t of the blue Aberdares. We bumped along narrower and narrower roads and finally came to the house, which was partly bricked and partly shingled, a puzzle of colour and texture that nonetheless managed to look inviting.

  Idina and her husband Joss had built the house but rented the farm. He was her third husband, actually, and together the pair looked as though they might have stepped out of a magazine. They were fair-skinned and slim-hipped, and both wore their auburn hair cropped and slicked to one side. He looked feminine, or she looked masculine. Either way, they were radiant twins as they greeted our car, followed closely by several servants in fezzes and long white robes. The servants swept our bags away while the barefooted Idina and Joss led us over the weedy hummocks to a place where an elaborate picnic was laid out. Another couple sprawled out on the grass on a tartan blanket, both in straw hats and drinking whisky sours in frosty glasses. For most people, a picnic meant dry sandwiches and tepid water in canteens. Here there was an ice machine that ran on a generator. It whirred like a valet at the ready. A gramophone played rolling tendrils of jazz.

  “Hello,” cooed the slim, pretty woman on the tartan. She sat up, cross-legged, and adjusted her hat. This was Honor Gordon and the gentleman, Charles, was her new husband—a pale, dark, smart-looking Scot who’d been cast off a few years before by Idina herself. They all seemed good friends now, thoroughly comfortable with one another and also with Frank, who drew out his brown velvet bag before he’d finished his first drink.