Green City in the Sun (6 page)

     Rose now walked in her mind through the rooms of the new house, seeing them as Valentine had described them, with their polished wood and stone columns, the beam ceilings, the fireplace as large as a theater stage. She saw the music room, where she would play the grand piano which was now traveling in the last wagon. The legs had been removed to be shipped separately from London. She saw the billiard room with its Savonnerie carpet, the type the royal family used, and there was even, in the first wagon, a carefully packed crystal chandelier for the dining room.

     But when Rose's fantasy brought her to the door of the bedroom, she stopped short.

     Grace, sitting beside her in the wagon, did not see the sudden stiffening of Rose's body, the smile turn into a thin line. She did not know of the thumping heart, the fresh anxiety. Rose kept it all to herself, for it was something no one must ever know.

     Valentine came into her mind and she shivered. Rose already knew how he was going to react to the baby: He would pretend that nothing had happened, that little Mona hadn't even been born. He would give Rose that familiar look, that wanting look, and then he would start making those demands on her body again.

     How overjoyed she had been, last year, to be told she was pregnant. As propriety demanded, Valentine had immediately removed himself to a separate bedroom, and Rose had luxuriated in seven months of freedom. Had the baby been a boy, Valentine would have been satisfied. But now he would renew his efforts to produce an heir, and she shuddered to think of it.

     Rose had gone to Valentine a virgin and ignorant of the ways of men with women. Her wedding night had shocked her, and then revulsion had set in. It had gotten so that she would lie in bed, tense, hardly breathing, listening for his footsteps. And he would come, under the cover of darkness,
and use her like an animal. But Rose had learned to take herself out of the act. When she sensed this was going to be one of his nights, she would drink laudanum before retiring and then retreat into a fantasy while he did his work. They never spoke of it, not even in the crucial moments, but Rose had once considered speaking to Grace about it. Then she had changed her mind, remembering that even though her sister-in-law was a medical doctor, she was still a maiden lady and therefore would know nothing about these matters. So Rose let the matter rest, assuming it was like this between all husbands and wives.

     There was a sudden commotion up ahead; men at the front of the line shouted excitedly, and Che Che came running, for the first time in his life Grace had no doubt, to announce that they had reached the Chania River.

     Grace's heart leaped. The Chania! Farthest frontier of Kikuyu territory! And on the other side of it, her brother's plantation!

     Everyone hurried now, even the animals, as if sensing they were near the end of their long trek. The men pushed and heaved the wagons across the river, which was low in these last days of the dry season, and up the grassy slope that marked the beginning of Valentine's land.

     Rose came to life. She clutched her sister-in-law's hand and smiled. Grace was almost delirious. The end at last! After weeks on the ocean and in trains and wagons, of sleeping in tents and being eaten by insects, their destination lay just over this rise. A proper house, real beds, English meals . . . But more, the finish to all her wandering and travels; the place where she and Jeremy had planned to begin their life together. Perhaps, if he wasn't dead, as she thinly hoped, he would find her here, at last.

     When a sign, TREVERTON ESTATE, tacked to the trunk of a chestnut tree came into view, the company cheered. Even old Fitzpatrick, the staid butler, threw his sun helmet into the air. The baby began to cry; the wagons creaked and lurched; the Africans slapped the animals and goaded them on.

     They crested the rise and were met by a breathtaking sight: majestic Mount Kenya rising into a crown of mist. Just as Valentine had described it! And over there, to the southwest, at the edge of the cleared forest, exactly where he had said he had built it, on a gently rising hill that commanded a view of the mountain and valley—

     Everyone fell silent. A cold wind whistled down from the snowy peaks, tugging at skirts and hats, making the wagon canvas snap loudly in the silence. The only sound to be heard as everyone stared was the cry of baby Mona.

     Grace blinked in disbelief. And Rose whispered, "But ... there's nothing here! No house, no buildings ... nothing at all..."

H
ELLO THERE!
"

     Everyone turned to see Valentine riding up. He wore Hessian boots, jodhpurs, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the top buttons undone, and he was bareheaded. As if it weren't a cold day, Grace thought in annoyance. As if it weren't about to rain!

     "You've arrived!" he shouted as he jumped down from his horse and strode over to his wife. Valentine swept Rose into his arms and kissed her hard on the mouth. "Welcome home, darling."

     He turned to Grace, his arms held out. "Ah, and here's the blessed little doctoress!" But when he tried to embrace her, Grace pulled away. "Valentine," she said sharply, "where is the house?"

     "Why, it's right there! Can't you see it?" He waved toward the hill that had recently been cleared of trees and brush. "At least, it will be there. Come now, you look like a rainy day."

     "It
is
a rainy day, Val, and we're tired and hungry. Do you mean to tell me the house isn't even built yet?"

     "Things move slowly in Africa, old girl. You'll learn that soon enough. We have a tent camp down by the river."

     "Valentine, you can't possibly expect us to—"

     "Here," he said as he took her arm, "let me introduce you to our nearest neighbor. He's very good at polo. Has a handicap of six. Grace, please meet Sir James Donald. James, my sister, Grace Treverton."

     He had come riding up with Valentine and was pragmatically dressed in rugged pants and safari jacket, with a pith helmet on his head. When he dismounted, Grace noticed that he walked with a slight limp.

     Sir James was smiling before he reached her; it was a shy, almost self-conscious smile, and she saw that he couldn't be much older than she, possibly thirty-one or thirty-two. He surprised her when he held out his hand to shake hers, something an English gentleman would never do with a lady. Then he said in a cultured voice, "Val tells me you're a doctor," and Grace said, "Yes," defensively. But when he said, "That's bloody marvelous. We desperately need doctors here," Grace suddenly noticed how handsome he was.

     They stood silently for the moment, their gazes held, their hands still clasped, and then Valentine said, "Let me show you around the new homestead."

     Grace watched Sir James return to his horse. He was a tall, slim man, and he carried himself very straight, almost stiffly, as if to compensate for the limp.

     Lady Rose had stayed back by the wagon with a lost look on her face. When her husband called to her, she said in a timid voice, "Valentine, dear, don't you want to see the baby?"

     A shadow briefly crossed his handsome face; then he said exuberantly, "Come along now! Take a look 'round your new home!"

     Mrs. Pembroke followed Lady Rose into the pony wagon and sat between the two sisters-in-law. Grace moved the blanket from Mona's face and saw that the baby was strangely quiet.

     The wagon, driven by one of Valentine's Africans, took them to the gentle hill that rose from the forest. As Grace stepped down to the red earth, she asked her brother again why the house wasn't built.

     "With limited labor available I had to establish priorities. It was more
important to get my seedlings transplanted before the rains than to have the house built. In fact, the seedling nursery was the first thing that went up. Once the planting is done in the fields, I'll have the workers start on the house."

     "Why did you tell us the house was finished?"

     "Because I wanted my wife here with me. If I had told her she must live in a tent for another year, she would not have come."

     When they reached the crest of the hill, Grace received a shock. The forest was gone; a magnificent vista stood before her. After weeks of cutting her way through dense growth, Grace was breathless to see so much sky. She felt as if she floated in space. The valley below, sweeping away to the foot of Mount Kenya, had been cleared of all trees and bracken.

     Valentine ran his hands through his thick black hair. "What do you think, old girl? Can you see it? Acres and acres as far as the eye can see of rich green coffee trees covered with white blossoms, as if a wedding party had passed through. And bright red berries waiting to be picked!"

     Grace was impressed. Her brother seemed to have worked a small miracle in this wilderness that stood at the back of beyond. The forest ended abruptly at the edge of newly tilled soil, and great rows of holes marched in a straight and orderly fashion to the misty ends of the valley—surprisingly large holes, Grace thought, knee-deep and as wide as a man, accompanied in their parade by neat lines of banana trees.

     "There will be six hundred coffee bushes to an acre," Valentine explained, his voice filled with pride. "And that's five thousand acres, Grace! In three or four years our first harvest will be in. Those banana trees are for shade—coffee requires shade, you know. I've also planted imported jacaranda trees, which will stand along those borders." He waved an arm. "In years to come they'll be flowering with lavender blossoms. Can you see it? This will be the view from the front of the house.

     "Over there," Valentine said, pointing to an enormous flat area down by the river, "is the seedling nursery. There's a furrow from the Chania to irrigate it. Those chaps down there are uprooting the weak seedlings. That's the secret of a successful crop, Grace. Some growers make the mistake of leaving the weak ones in for another year, thinking it'll strengthen them, but
the trick is just to pull them out and plant new seed. The world doesn't know it yet, Grace; but someday there is going to be a great demand for Nairobi coffee, and it's all going to come from the Treverton Estate!"

     "How do you know so much about growing coffee, Val?"

     "The padres of the mission where I bought the seeds have been helpful. Plus there're some decent blokes in Nairobi willing to share tips. And Karen's taught me a lot."

     "Karen?"

     "The Baroness von Blixen. She has a coffee estate out by Ngong. We're using the bronze-tip variety here. The best arabica seeds in the world, Grace. I planted them a year ago when I came back from German East Africa." He looked up at the pearl gray sky. "As soon as the rains begin, we'll transplant the seedlings."

     Grace stared in fascination at the regiment of African women in the fields, dressed in soft brown hides, with babies on their backs, bent straight-legged and tamping the dirt inside the holes with their hands. "Why are there mostly women and children working, Val? Why are there so few men?"

     "Those chaps down there are the ones that felt like working. The rest are no doubt sitting under a tree down by the river, drinking beer. It's bloody difficult to get them to work. Have to keep after them all the time. Once my back is turned, they're off into the bush. You see, by Kikuyu tradition, all farm work is done by women. It is beneath a man's dignity to tend crops. Men were the warriors; they did all the fighting."

     "Do they still fight?"

     "We put a stop to that. The Kikuyu and Masai were constantly at war, raiding one another's villages, stealing cattle and women. We took away their spears and shields, and now they simply do nothing."

     "Well, you can't force them to work."

     "Actually, we can."

     Grace had heard about the Native Labor Act back in England when the archbishop of Canterbury had attacked the practice loudly in the House of Lords, calling it modern slavery. Kikuyu men, once warriors but now idle and without employment, were being forced to work on white settler farms, the rationale being that the labor gave them something to do and that their
tribe benefited from the food, clothing, and medical care they received in return.

     "The war with Germany nearly did us in, Grace. British East Africa is headed for certain bankruptcy if we don't find a way to generate revenue. This can be gotten only through agriculture and export. The white farmer can't do it single-handedly, so if we all work together, everyone—natives and Europeans—will benefit. And I'm going to fight to make this new country work, Grace. I didn't come here to fail. Others like me, like Sir James, we're bloody struggling to bring East Africa out of the Pleistocene and into the modern age. And we're dragging its people with us, kicking and screaming if we must."

     She looked down at the cleared fields, at the hundreds of rows waiting for their seedlings, and said, "There are more natives here than I expected. I had understood from the Land Office that we had purchased vacant land."

     "We did."