The Ashford Affair
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Authors: Lauren Willig
CONTENTS
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To James, now and always
Kenya, 1926
Addie’s gloves were streaked with sweat and red dust.
It wasn’t just her gloves. Looking down, she winced at the sight of her once pearl-colored suit, now turned gray and rust with smoke and dust. Even in the little light that managed to filter through the thick mosquito netting on the windows, the fabric was clearly beyond repair. The traveling outfit that had looked so smart in London had proved to be a poor choice for the trip from Mombasa.
She felt such a fool. What had she been thinking? It had cost more than her earnings for the month, that dress, an unpardonable extravagance in these days when her wardrobe ran more to the sensible than the chic. It had taken a full afternoon of scouring Oxford Street, going into one shop, then the next, this dress too common, that too expensive, nothing just right, until she finally found it, just a little more than she could afford, looking almost, if one looked at it in just the right way, as though it might be couture, rather than a poor first cousin to it.
She had peacocked in her tiny little flat, posing in front of the mirror with the strange ripple down the middle, twisting this way and that to try to get the full effect, her imagination presenting her with a hundred tempting images. Bea coming to the train to meet her, an older, more matronly Bea, her silver-gilt hair burned straw by the equatorial sun, her figure softened by childbearing. She would see Addie stepping off the train in her smart new frock with her smart new haircut and exclaim in surprise. She would turn Addie this way and that, marveling at her, her new city sophistication, her sleek hair, her newly plucked brows.
You’ve grown up, Bea would say. And Addie would smile, just a wry little hint of a smile, the sort of smile you saw over cocktails at the Ritz, and say, It does happen.
And, then, from somewhere behind her, Frederick would say, Addie? and she would turn and see surprise and admiration chasing each other across his face as he realized, for the first time, just what he had left behind in London.
Sweat dripped between her breasts, dampening her dress. She didn’t need to look down to know that she was hopelessly splotched, with the sort of sweat stains that would turn yellow with washing.
Addie permitted herself a twisted smile. She had so hoped—such an ignoble hope!—that just once she might look the better by comparison, that even a poor first cousin to couture might come off first in comparison to the efforts of Nairobi’s dressmakers. Instead, here she was again, an utter mess, a month and a week away from all that was familiar and comfortable, chugging across the plains of Africa—and why?
David had asked her that before she left. Why?
He had asked it so sensibly, so logically. Her first impulse had been to bristle, to tell him it was no business of his. But it was; she knew that. The ring he had given her hung on a chain around her neck, a pre-engagement rather than an engagement.
Put it on when I come back,
she had told him.
We can make the announcements then.
But why wait?
he had asked.
Why go?
Because …
she had begun, and faltered. How could she answer him when she didn’t quite know why herself? She had mumbled something about her favorite cousin, about Bea needing her, about old affections and old debts.
All the way to Africa?
he had asked with that quirk of the brow that his students so dreaded as they sputtered their way through their explications of Plato’s
Republic
or Aristotle’s
Politics.
Perhaps I want to go because I want to go,
she had said sharply. Hadn’t he thought of that? That she might want to travel beyond the borders of the country, just once in her life? That she might want to live a little before donning an apron and cooking his dinners?
It was a cheap shot, but an effective one. He had been apologetic immediately. He was very forward-thinking, David. It was one of the things she liked about him—no, one of the things she loved about him. He actually found it admirable that she worked. He admired her for throwing off her aristocratic shackles—his terms, that—and making her own way in the world.
He didn’t realize that the truth was so much more complex, so much less impressive. She had less thrown than been thrown.
Poor David. Duly chastised, he had made it his business to plot her trip to Africa, appearing, each evening, with a new guilt offering, a map, a travel guide, a train schedule. He had entered into the planning for her trip as though he were going instead of she. Addie had nodded and smiled and pretended an interest she didn’t feel. To do otherwise would be to acknowledge that the question was still there, hanging between them.
Why?
She jolly well wished she knew. Beneath her cloche, her hair was matted to her head with sweat. Addie yanked it off, dropping it on the narrow bed. The movement of the train ought to have created a bit of breeze, but the screens were tightly fitted, their mesh clogged with the red dust that seemed almost worse than mosquitoes. With the screens down, the car was dark and airless, more like a cattle car than a first-class cabin, the clatter of wheels against track broken far too frequently by the high-pitched wail of the whistle.
Kneeling on the bed, she wrestled the screen open. The train chugged steadily along on its slim, single track—the Iron Snake, they had told her the natives called it, in Mombasa, as she had struggled to see her belongings from ship to train, jostled this way and that in the bustling, busy harbor. In the distance, she could see a flock of beasts, rather like deer, but with thin, high horns, startled into flight by the noise of the train. It was nearly mid-day, and the equatorial sun made the scene shimmer in a kind of haze, like a glaze over glass, so that the fleeing beasts rippled as they ran, like an impressionist painting.
She had never imagined Africa being so very green, nor the sky so very blue.
Her imaginings, such as they were, had been in shades of sienna and burnt umber, browns and oranges, with, perhaps, a bit of jungle thrown in, as a courtesy to H. Rider Haggard. Perhaps she ought to have paid more attention to the books and maps David had brought, instead of watching him, his thin face animated in the lamplight, feeling a familiar mix of obligation and guilt, affection and dread. She hadn’t bothered to think much about Africa at all. There were books she could have read, people she could have quizzed, but she hadn’t bothered, not with any of it. When she had thought of coming to Africa, it hadn’t been of Africa she had thought.
The wind shifted, sending a plume of wood smoke directly at her.
Addie slammed the screen down again, coughing in acrid haze. Her handkerchief came away black when she pressed it to her face. She stumbled to the little lavatory, scrubbing herself as clean as she could, avoiding the sight of her own face in the mirror.
Such a plain little face, compared to Bea’s glowing loveliness.
The Debutante of the Decade, they had called Bea, the papers delighting in the alliteration of it. She had been photographed, not once, but a dozen times, as Diana, as Circe, as a beam of moonlight, as a bride, in lace and orange flowers.
Addie tried to remember Bea, remember her as she had been, her face bright with movement, but all she could conjure up was the cool beauty of a photographer’s formal portrait, silver-blond hair sleeked forward around a fine-featured face, lips a Roman goddess would envy, pale blue eyes washed gray by the photographer’s palette. She kept the photo on the mantel of her bed-sit, the silver frame an incongruous touch against the peeling paint and damp-stained walls, relic of a life that seemed as long ago as the “once upon a time” in a child’s story.
Addie wondered how that pale loveliness had held up under the equatorial sun. It was six years since they had seen each other. Would she be changed? Lined, weary, burned brown?
It was impossible to imagine Bea as anything but what she had been, dressed in silk and fringe, a cigarette holder in one hand. Try as she might, Addie couldn’t picture her on a farm in Kenya, couldn’t reconcile her with dirt and sun, khaki and mosquito net. That was for other people, not Bea. She found it nearly as hard to believe, despite the evidence of her cousin’s pen, that she was a mother now, not once, but twice over. Two little girls, her letter had said. Marjorie and Anna.
Addie had gifts for the two girls in her trunk, French dolls with porcelain faces and sawdust arms. She had bought them at the last minute, grabbing up the first ones she had found, just in case the children were real and not one of her cousin’s elaborate teases. Motherhood and Bea were two concepts that didn’t go together. Rather like Bea and Kenya.
Addie worried at the finger of her glove. She should stop it and stop it now, before she got to Nairobi. She was being unfair. Bea might be a wonderful mother. She had certainly been a wonderful mentor to a lonely cousin, the best of guides and the best of friends. Careless sometimes, yes, but always loving.
People changed, Addie reminded herself. They did. They changed and learned and grew, just as she had.
Perhaps Kenya was what Bea had needed to bring out the best in her, just as emancipation had brought out the best in Addie. This might, Addie told herself hopefully, be all for the best. They could meet as equals now, each happy and secure in her own life, no more tangles of love and resentment and obligation. She wasn’t the charity girl in the nursery anymore.
She was twenty-six, she reminded herself. Twenty-six and self-supporting. She had been making her own living for five years, paying her own way and making her own decisions. The days of living in Bea’s household, trailing in Bea’s footsteps, were over, long over.
If anything, Bea’s letter had made it clear she needed her, not the other way around.
Addie slid Bea’s letter out of her travel wallet. It was stained and crumpled, read and reread.
Do come,
she had written, sounding like the old Bea, no hint of everything that had passed before she left.
I am utterly lost without you.
Distilled essence of Bea, thought Addie. Not just the sprawling letters, but the words themselves. Nothing ever was simply what it was; it was always utterly, terribly, desperately. Love or hate, Bea did neither by halves. Excellent when one was loved, not so entertaining when one was hated. Addie had seen both sides.
We should all so dearly love to see you.
“We.” Not Marjorie and Anna, they didn’t know her to miss her. Addie had sat up, night after night, parsing that one word like a professor with a poem, twisting and turning it from every angle. We. Was it only another example of Bea’s hyperbole? A kindly social gesture? Or—