A Spear of Summer Grass (3 page)

Since Mossy might well have been carrying the heir to the Drummond title, she’d spent her pregnancy sitting around at the family estate, waiting to pup. As soon as she went into labour, my father’s five brothers descended upon Cherryvale from London, pacing outside Mossy’s room until the doctor emerged with the news that the eldest of them was now the undisputed heir to their father’s title. Mossy told me she could hear the champagne corks and hushed whoops through the door. They needn’t have bothered to keep it down. If she’d been mother to the heir she’d have been forced to stay at Cherryvale with her in-laws. Since I was a girl—and of no particular interest to anyone—she was free to go. The prospect of leaving thrilled her so much she would have happily bought them a round of champagne herself.

As it was, she packed me up as soon as she could walk and we decamped to a suite at the Savoy with Ingeborg and room service to look after us. Mossy never returned to Cherryvale, but I went back for school holidays while my grandparents were alive. They spent most of their time correcting my posture and my accent. I eventually stopped slouching thanks to enforced hours walking the long picture gallery at Cherryvale with a copy of
Fordyce’s Sermons
on my head, but the long Louisiana drawl that had made itself at home on my tongue never left. It got thicker every summer when I went back to Reveille, but mellowed each school term when the girls made fun of me and I tried to hide it. I never did get the hang of those flat English vowels, and I eventually realised it was just easier to pummel the first girl who mocked me. I was chucked out of four schools for fighting, and Mossy despaired of ever making a lady of me.

But I did master the social graces—most of them anyway—and I made my debut in London in 1911. Mossy had been barred from Court on account of her divorces and it was left to my Drummond aunt to bring me out properly. She did it with little grace and less enthusiasm, and I suspected some money might have changed hands. But I fixed my fancy Prince of Wales feathers to my hair and rode to the palace in a carriage and made my double curtsey to the king and queen. The next night I went to my first debutante ball and two days later I eloped with a black-haired boy from Devonshire whose family almost disowned him for marrying an American with nothing but scandal for a dowry.

Johnny didn’t care. All he wanted was me, and since all I wanted was him, it worked out just fine. The Colonel came through with a handsome present of cash and Johnny had a little family money. He wanted to write, so I bought him a typewriter as a wedding present and he would sit at our little kitchen table pecking away as I burned the chops. He read me his articles and bits of his novel every evening as I eventually figured out how not to scorch things, and by the time his book was finished, I had even learned to make a proper soufflé. We were proud of each other, and everything we did seemed new, as if it was the first time it had ever been done. Whether it was sex or prose or jam on toast, we invented it. There was something fine about our time together, and when I took the memories out to look at them, I peered hard to find a shadow somewhere. Did the mirror crack when I sat on the edge of the bathtub and watched him shave? Did I spill salt when I fixed his eggs? Did an owl come to roost in the rafters of the attic? I had been brought up on omens, nursed on portents. Not from Mossy. She was a new creation, a modern woman, although I had spied her telling her rosary when she didn’t think I saw.

But there were the others. The Colonel’s withered old mother, Granny Miette, her keeper Teenie, and Teenie’s daughter, Angele. They were the guardians of my childhood summers at Reveille, and they kept the old ways. They knew that not everything is as it seems and that if you look closely enough, you can see the shadows of what’s to come in the bright light of your own happiness. Time is slower in Louisiana, each minute dripping past like cold molasses. Plenty of time to see if you want to and you know where to look.

I never looked in those days with Johnny. When I opened a closet and something fluttered out of the corner of my eye, I told myself it was just moths and nothing more, and I hung lavender and cedar to drive them away. When I peered in a cupboard and saw a shadow scurry past, I said it was mice and bought a cat, the meanest mouser I could find. I sent to Reveille for golden strands of vetiver and carried the dry grass in a small bundle in my pocket. It was the scent of sunlight and home, pungent and earthy and cedar-green-smelling, and I sewed a handful of it in the uniform that Johnny put on in 1914.

The uniform came back—or at least pieces of it did. Germans blew him to bits during the Battle of the Marne, and I don’t remember much of what happened after that. A black curtain has fallen over that time, and I don’t ever pull it back to look behind. It’s a place I don’t visit in my memories, and it was a long while before I came out of it. When I emerged, I chopped off my hair and hemmed up my skirts and set out to see what I’d been missing in the world. It had been an interesting ride, no doubt about it, but things had gotten a little out of hand to land me with banishment to Africa. I had handled my affairs with style and even a little discretion from time to time. But the world could be a hard place on a girl who was just out for a little fun, and I felt mightily put upon as the train churned into the station at Marseilles.

At the sight of the ship, my spirits perked right up. I had had a choice of sailing with a British outfit or later with a German one, but I had refused point blank to cross to Mombasa with a bunch of Krauts. I was still holding a bit of a grudge over Johnny and wasn’t inclined to give them a penny of my money. Sailing a week earlier meant missing the closing of Cocteau’s
Antigone,
but I was not about to budge. And when I saw the crew, I didn’t even mind giving up the Chanel costumes or the Picasso sets. The boys were absolutely darling, each and every one of them, and for the next fortnight, I nursed my grievances in style. The deck steward made certain my chair was always in the best spot, near the sun but comfortably shaded as we moved south. As soon as I settled myself each morning, he was there with a travelling rug and a cup of hot bouillon. The dining steward dampened my tablecloth lightly so my plate wouldn’t slide in rough seas and the wine wouldn’t spill on my French silks. The older officers took turns escorting me onto the dance floor, and the younger ones gathered up empty bottles by the armful. We composed messages to seal inside, each one sillier than the last, and hurled them overboard until the captain put a stop to it. But he made up for it by inviting me to sit at his table for the rest of the voyage, and I discovered he was the best dancer of the lot. Poor Dodo was violently seasick and spent the entire trip holed up in her cabin with a basin between her knees and a compress on her brow.

I was feeling much better indeed by the time we sailed into Mombasa, past the old Portuguese fort of St. Jesus. I had asked the officers endless questions about the place and they talked over each other until I scarcely got a word in edgewise. I learned quite a bit about Mombasa, although my knowledge was rather limited to places that might appeal to sailors. If I needed a tipple or a tattoo or a two-dollar whore, I knew just the spots, but five-star hotels seemed in short supply. They told me if we sailed into port early in the morning, I could make straight for Nairobi on the noon train, heading up-country to where the white settlers had carved out a settlement for themselves. The captain had an uncle who had gone up-country and he regaled me with tales of hippos in the gardens and leopards in the trees. I knew a bit from Nigel’s stories as well, but the captain’s knowledge was somewhat fresher and he offered me his guidebook as a reference.

“Be careful with the natives,” he warned. “Don’t let them take advantage of you. If you need advice, find an Englishman who’s been there and knows the drill. Make sure you visit the club in Nairobi. It’s the best place to get a bit of society and all the news. They won’t let you join, naturally, since you are a lady, but you would be permitted inside as the guest of a member. You will want to mix with your own kind, of course, but mind you steer clear of politics.”

“Politics! In a backwater like this?” I teased.

The captain had lovely eyes, but the expression in them was so serious it dampened the effect. “Definitely. Rhodesia gained its independence from the Crown last year, and there are those who feel that Kenya ought to be next.”

“And will England let her go as easily as she did Rhodesia?”

A slight furrow plowed its way between his brows. “Difficult to say. You see, England doesn’t care about Africa itself, not really. It’s all about control of the Suez.” He flipped open the guidebook and pointed on the map. “France, England and Germany have all established colonies in Africa to keep a close eye upon the Suez. At present, we have the advantage,” he said with a tinge of British pride, “but we may not keep it. It all depends on Whitehall and how nervous they are about India.” He traced a line from India westward, through the Arabian Sea, into the Gulf of Aden and then a sharp turn up the slender length of the Red Sea to the Suez at the tip of Egypt. “See there? Whoever controls Egypt controls the Suez, and through it, all the riches of India.”

I picked up the long slender line of the Nile. One branch, the Blue, curved into Ethiopia, but the other snaked through Uganda and trailed off somewhere beyond. “And whoever controls the Nile controls Egypt.”

“They do,” he conceded. “For now, we Brits control Egypt and the Suez is safe, but matters could change if the ultimate source of the White Nile is discovered to be in hostile territory.”

“Reason enough for England to hold onto Kenya,” I observed.

“Not just that,” he said, slowly folding up the map. “England has an obligation to the Indians who have come to settle here.”

“Indians? In Kenya?”

“Thousands,” he said grimly. “Now, they did their part during the war and no doubt about it. But one cannot deny that it has complicated matters here to no end. They are agitating for the right to own land, and some at Whitehall are inclined to give it them.”

“That can’t make the white colonists very happy.”

“Tensions are running high, and you’d do well to avoid any appearance of taking sides. Not that anyone would expect so lovely a lady to trouble herself with such things,” he added. I was a little surprised at his gallantry.

“Now, don’t you even think of flirting with me,” I warned him with a light tap to the arm. “I know you have a wife back in Southampton.”

He gave me a rueful smile. “That I do. But I can still appreciate innocent and congenial company.”

“So long as we both understand that the company will remain innocent,” I returned with an arch glance.

He laughed and freshened my drink. “My vessel and myself are at your disposal, Miss Drummond. How may we amuse you?”

I cocked my head to the side and pretended to think. “I would like to steer the ship.”

3

I did steer the ship, and very nearly ran her into an island, but the captain was most understanding and we parted as friends. When I disembarked with Dodo—still looking a bit worse for wear—the crew assembled to wave us off and even fired a salute. I blew kisses to them until Dodo jerked my arm nearly out of the socket.

“Delilah, must you always make such a spectacle out of yourself?” she hissed. I tried not to take it personally. She still looked peaky and clutched her basin fervently.

“It’s not me, darling. The boys gathered to see us onto shore. It would be rude not to acknowledge them.” I waved one last time as I climbed into the car waiting to transfer us to the station. Dodo heaved into her basin while she juggled my jewel case and a strap of books the crew had given me, all inscribed with thoughtful messages.

The town of Mombasa was just as strange and wild as I had expected, the air damp and heavy with the scent of spices and smoke and donkeys. I lifted my nose, sniffing appreciatively, but Dodo just moaned softly until we were safely ensconced on the train and pulling away from the city.

I lowered the window, letting in the fragrant spices and the tang of the woodsmoke that poured from the engines. “Here, Dodo, sit by the window and stick your head out like a dog. The fresh air will sort you out.”

She did as I told her to and soon her colour came back, although that might have been the red dust blowing into her face. She sat back after a while and we passed the next hours peacefully. Dodo dozed and I watched Africa reveal itself. First came the mangrove swamps with their sinister-looking roots. They reminded me of the bayous back home, the branches twisting out to catch at a person and hold them fast. The roots thrust up through the muck, looking as if the trees had gotten up and walked around when no one was looking and had just come to rest.

After the mangrove swamps, there were acres of orchards thick with tropical fruits—coconuts and mangoes, bananas and papayas, all ripening like jewels as monkeys frolicked through their branches, plotting and pilfering like highwaymen. Beyond the fruit trees, the country opened up to wide prairie, tilting upward like an angled plate and each mile carried us higher. We crossed a few bridges I didn’t like the looks of, and I liked the sound of them even less. Each one swayed and creaked in protest, and I held my breath until we made it to the other side.

We stopped at every small station on the line to fill the boilers of the steam engines, and at every station women peddlers with sleek black skin wrapped bright calico fabric about their bodies and sold wares from baskets on their heads. I bought bananas and mangoes and devoured them, licking mango juice from my hands as Dora continued to moan.

I pointed out one bridge from my guidebook as we crossed it. “This is the Tsavo bridge, Dodo. When it was built, a pair of man-eating lions spent nine months gobbling up the crew. It says here they ate more than a hundred men.”

She gave a delicate hiccup and fixed me with a hateful look. “What are you reading?
The Ghoulish Guide to Kenya?
”

I waved the book at her. “It’s the guidebook the captain gave me, his own personal copy. Baedeker’s. Ooh, and it says that the lions would creep into camp and carry off victims, staying just close enough that their companions could hear the beasts crunching into the bones in the night.”

“Stop it, Delilah. You’re just as bad as you were when we were children, always reading those horrible ghost stories out loud just to frighten me.”

“Don’t be stupid. I read them to you because you never owned you were frightened. If you’d shown the slightest fear I would have stopped.”

“I used to lock myself in the bathroom and sleep in the bathtub. Of course I was frightened,” she argued. “You just liked to torment me.”

“Possibly,” I conceded. “Oh, and it says here one of the stations is notorious for the number of man-eating lions that have roamed around it, eating the builders. The station is called Kima. That means ‘minced meat’ in Swahili.”

“Do be quiet,” she said sharply and promptly vomited into her basin.

I turned back to the view and watched Africa unrolling before me, mile after mile of emptiness under a sky as big as any in the States.

* * *

Some time later, when dusk began to fall, I heard footsteps overhead. Dora jolted awake. “What is that? An animal?”

I answered her with a peal of laughter. “No, you ninny. It’s the railman lighting the lamps.”

Just at that moment, a trapdoor opened above us and a cheerful Indian face peered inside.

“Good evening,
memsahibs
.”

Dora gave a little scream and shrank back against the seat, but I smiled at the fellow.

“Ignore her, I beg you. She has delicate nerves.”

He reached in to light the oil lamp and the carriage was bathed in the warm glow of civilisation. He gave a single nod and said crisply, “
Voi
in half an hour,” before dropping the trapdoor neatly back into place.

“What does
Voi
mean?” Dora demanded.

I rifled through the pages of the guidebook before giving her a triumphant smile. “
Voi
is where we eat.”

Right on schedule, the train stopped at a bungalow. Hanging outside was a hand-lettered sign proclaiming that we had reached
Voi.
In the packed-earth yard, third-class passengers crowded around picnic baskets while first-class travellers made straight for the dining room inside. The stewards were wearing pristine white jackets and serving thoroughly English food from the look of it. Dora staggered to her seat and collapsed gratefully, requesting a gingerroot tisane and waving off any suggestion of food.

Just as I had made up my mind to order a second glass of champagne, a shadow loomed over the table.

“I say, I’m terribly sorry to intrude, but there don’t seem to be any empty tables.”

I looked up to see that the Englishman matched his voice, rich and slow. He was good-looking in a slightly seedy way, and I liked the coolness of his blue eyes. His mouth was thin and possibly cruel, but his hands were beautiful. I smiled.

“There is a free seat at the table over there,” I countered with a nod towards a trio of gentlemen tucking into bowls of muddy brown soup. “Why not sit with them?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Because a beautiful woman in this place is like a long drink of cool water in the desert. And two beautiful women...” He trailed off, collecting Dora with his gaze. It was the rankest flattery. Dora was not beautiful.

I waved him to one of the empty chairs as he introduced himself. “I assure you, manners are far more relaxed here in Africa than back home. You needn’t worry about the lack of formal introduction. I am Anthony Wickenden.”

“And how do you know where home is for me, Mr. Wickenden? I might be accustomed to very casual manners indeed.”

He raised a brow into a delicate arch. It was a practiced gesture and one I had no doubt he had used often and to great effect. “I think a lady of such sophistication could only come from Paris.”

I clucked my tongue. “Disloyal for an Englishman,” I scolded gently. “Don’t you have sophisticated women in London?”

“None like you.”

I took out a Sobranie and fit it into the holder. Before I could reach into my bag again, he bent forward, a tiny flame dancing at the end of his match. I leaned into him as he cupped his hands to protect the flame. I took two short drags, sucking the fire onto the end of my cigarette, my eyes fixed on his. He swallowed hard, and I blew out the match.

I sat back and crossed my legs. “Tell me about Mrs. Wickenden.”

A slow smile spread over his face. “What makes you so certain there is a Mrs. Wickenden?”

“I can smell a wife a mile away, Mr. Wickenden, and you have the stink of one all over you.”

He laughed, and the suave stranger disappeared. He was simply a friendly fellow looking for a bit of a chat then, and we settled to our dinner companionably. The stewards served up a succession of depressing courses—brown Windsor soup followed by boiled beef and cabbage, listlessly mashed potatoes, and tinned fruit and custard. I picked the insects out of mine and lined them up on the edge of the plate. Wickenden didn’t even bother.

“You’ll get used to it in time. Insects and dust will be half of every meal you consume out here.” Between indifferent bites he told me a little about himself. He was on his way home to his farm outside Nairobi. He had been in Africa for many years, having come out as a boy with his parents. He had tried—and failed—to farm a variety of crops and had decided to turn his hand to breeding racehorses.

“That’s what I was doing in Mombasa,” he said smoothly, “looking at some fresh stock.”

He was testing out the lie, I could tell, seeing how well it fit his tongue before he tried it at home. I shrugged. I wasn’t his wife; it didn’t matter to me what he’d really been up to in Mombasa, but even I knew it wasn’t exactly a hot spot for horse-trading.

I told him about Fairlight and he leaned forward, almost dragging a cuff in his custard. “Hold on, now. You know Sir Nigel?”

“He was my stepfather,” I explained. “He has very sweetly put Fairlight at my disposal while I rusticate.”

“But we’re neighbours!” he exclaimed happily. He had drunk the better part of a bottle of gin at that point, which might have accounted for his excitement, or maybe a new face in the Kenyan bush was just that much of an event. Either way, it was nice to be welcomed, and I told him so.

“More than welcome, my dear. You must come to dine with us at Nyama Ranch.”

“Us?” I teased.

He had the grace to smile. “Yes, us. Nyama is owned by my wife’s aunt. Jude and I live there with her. Sort of keeping the old girl in line, you understand. Not as young as she used to be.”

Oh, I understood perfectly. Poor feckless Wickenden had gambled himself into the poorhouse with his farming experiments and had no choice but to live off his wife’s money now. I wondered who was footing the bill for the racing stables.

We finished our drinks and towed Dora onto the veranda for brandy and cigars. I liked my Sobranies, but I loved a good cigar. It was like French-kissing fire. Dora had long since grown immune to my occasional indulgence, but Wickenden lit up like a boy who had just seen his first naughty photograph.

“How deliciously scandalous,” he breathed. He leaned close to my ear, whispering a few inappropriate suggestions, but I pretended not to hear. A steward rang the veranda bell just then, sounding the signal for passengers to board the train. Dora hurried on, but Wickenden caught my hand.

“Silly girl. We needn’t go yet. It takes ages to warm those damned engines up. Unlike mine,” he finished, sticking a fat, limp tongue in my ear.

I turned to smile at him as I took the end of my cigar and held its glowing tip to his trouser leg. It took less time than I would have thought. The linen of his suit was excellent quality, woven so fine the cigar burned right through and singed his skin before he realised what was happening. He jumped up, scattering sparks and swear words into the darkness.

I swayed off towards the train as he hurled a variety of names at my back. As usual, they rolled right off, and I returned to the carriage to find that the beds had been made up with fresh linen and blankets and Dora was already tucked up for the night. She had left out my night things as well as a jar of my cold cream from Elizabeth Arden. A better lady’s maid would have stayed up to put away my clothes, but I had to make allowances. She was family after all. I stripped off my dress and underthings and began to wash.

“Did he make a pass?” She didn’t look up from her book, but the fact that she was reading meant she was feeling better. I glanced at the title.
Meditations on the Song of Songs
.

“He did, and a clumsy one at that. No finesse at all.” I dried myself and began rubbing in the cold cream.

“What did you do?”

“Burned him with my cigar.”

She smothered a laugh and returned to her book as I snuggled down in the covers. The train pulled away, blasting its whistle into the long African night.

* * *

The next morning we stopped for breakfast at another of the innumerable stations, and I ate a plate of surprisingly tasty eggs with a few questionable sausages and a bowl of cut tropical fruits spritzed with lime. Dora nibbled at corn gruel and weak tea, and when it didn’t immediately reappear, she added an egg and some toast.

“Do you realise that’s the first full meal you’ve eaten since Marseilles?” I asked, helping myself to a slice of her toast.

She perked up. “Really? Do you suppose I’ve lost weight?”

Dora’s hips were the bane of her existence. She spent most of her time slimming—a vain effort in more ways than one.

“Hard to tell in that frock,” I answered, slathering the toast with passionfruit jam.

She pulled a face. “I don’t suppose it’s very becoming, but you know I don’t really understand clothes.”

I shrugged. “You’re fighting a losing battle anyway, Dodo. Straight lines don’t flatter your figure,” I told her. Dora’s shape might have been fashionable in Edwardian times, but fashions had changed and unfortunately Dora’s body didn’t. The pouter-pigeon silhouette which came naturally to her—heavy breasts and rounded hips—was hopelessly out of date. There wasn’t a dress to be had in all of Paris that would have complemented her small waist and Junoesque curves. It was all slim seams and clinging fabrics that conspired to make her look lumpy and dull. Her hair didn’t help. It was nice enough—the colour of dark honey and rippling like a windy pond when she took it out of the pins. But it was long enough she could sit on it and the roll she wore at the nape of her neck made her look like someone’s grandmother. All that hair gave her a perpetual headache, too, but it just went hand in hand with her digestive troubles.

“Then there’s no point to my bothering about clothes since nothing looks good on me anyway.”

I didn’t trouble to respond. Usually Dora had as much vanity as a dust mop, but every once in a while she got onto the subject of her own dowdiness and when it came to feeling sorry for herself, Dodo could ride that hobby horse until the paint wore off.