A Spear of Summer Grass (7 page)

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 the 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.

I had been genuinely sorry to hear he’d been shipped off to Africa, but now that I saw his work, I realised it might well have been the making of him. His paintings were enormous, reckless things, barely containing his passion within the boundaries of the canvas. He had taken Africa as his muse and subject and every piece depicted either landscape or dark faces. They were interesting faces, too, full of character and mystery, and the closer I looked the more I wanted to.

I stepped back and saw him watching me with an expectant expression.

“They’re rather good, aren’t they?”

“They’re brilliant and you know it. I’d buy the lot if I could,” I told him truthfully.

“I’d let you if I could,” he said with a smile. “There’s a fellow named Hillenbrank who means to open a gallery in Nairobi. He’s promised me a show when he gets it off the ground.”

It was a small thing, a gallery exhibition in a backwater like Nairobi, particularly for an artist who had shown in New York. But Kit was happy and I was the last person who would rain on that particular parade. Like most artists, he was prone to dark moods and sulking fits, and I was practiced at tap dancing around them.

I smiled widely and slipped my hand in his. “You deserve it, darling. They’re
important.
”

Important
is the magic word with artists, the “open sesame” that causes them to drop their guard and let you inside. They all want to think that they are contributing something to humanity, bless them, and nothing fuels their creative fire like believing they will sign their names in the history books with daubs of oil paint. Still, I meant it. There was something truly moving about his art, a sureness to his technique that had not been there before and a newfound confidence in what he wanted to say. And I wanted to listen.

He fixed a wretched lunch we didn’t eat and made up for it with a sturdy batch of gin-and-tonics.

“The tonic water keeps malaria at bay,” he told me.

“Really?”

“No. It’s something the Brits made up to justify drinking enough gin to stagger a sailor. But it sounds good,” he added with an impish smile.

He reached for me then and I didn’t put up much of a fight. Some men want a lot of resistance; it makes them feel like conquering heroes. But others, like Kit, are content with a token refusal. I said no, but his hand was already inside my shirt, and I didn’t say it again. I had forgotten about his hands. They might have been leaving hands, but while they hung around, they were damned good at what they did. We tried a few old favourites and a couple of new things, and by the time we finished, we were both sticking to the sheets. Africa was hot and still that afternoon and I was happy to drowse with a gin in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

“God, I had forgotten how good you are at that,” he said. “Why did we ever stop seeing each other?”

“I left for London to go to a wedding.”

“So? That shouldn’t have stopped us.”

“I was the bride.”

He laughed and reached for his own glass. His other hand was tucked behind his head, showing off his chest to excellent advantage. He was a brilliant poser, always settling into a position designed to accentuate the long, handsome lines of his body, as if an invisible life class hovered nearby, charcoal in hand, waiting to capture his likeness. He turned his face so it was in three-quarter profile.

“What happened to that husband?”

“Divorced. He’s my lawyer now. And there’s been another since him. A Russian prince who died on me before I could get my divorce.”

“Poor darling Delilah. Unlucky in love,” he murmured into my hair.

I got up then and went to the ancient gramophone by the window, wearing nothing but the black silk ribbon at my wrist. I sorted through the recordings before slipping one onto the machine. I wound it up and dropped the needle on “The Sheik of Araby.” I suddenly felt a little jangly and the music suited my mood.

“Tell me about this place,” I instructed him. “I want to hear about the neighbours and what you do for fun.”

“Well, you’ll be the belle of the ball if that’s what you’re worried about,” he said with a grin. He knew me too well. “The king and queen, appropriately enough, are Rex and Helen Farraday. They own a place a little farther up in the hills. He’s trying to ranch cattle but the poor brutes keep dying off. British, of course. They came out here and set up as the reigning pair and so far everyone is happy to let them.”

“I know them. Friends of Mossy’s—although I think Helen is a bit younger. Rex danced with me at my coming-out party. Quite dashing and perfectly tailored.”

“Still is, although how he manages in this heat, I cannot understand,” Kit said, his mouth a little rueful. I dropped a kiss to keep it from turning outright petulant. He reached for me, but I danced away and went to change the record.

“Keep talking. Who else is here?”

“There’s a doctor named Stevenson, a missionary named Halliwell who lives with his sister, a very upright and tightly buttoned sort. She won’t approve of you at all.” I pulled a face and he went on. “Then there’s Gervase Pemberton and his Spanish wife, Bianca.”