Thirty Girls (10 page)

He blew smoke, nodding.

They heard commotion in the hallway, the two men arriving and being greeted.

On the wall was a framed ink drawing of a naked woman, pregnant, lying on her side. Is that Beryl? she said. They both gazed at the frenzy of curving lines.

Yes, it looks like a Leonard.

She doesn’t sound particularly pleased with Leonard, Jane said.

Beryl has a lot of putting up to do.

And four kids on top of it, Jane said.

There was a silence in the tall room. Harry’s face was relaxed. Jane felt silence was something which must be filled.

I can barely imagine having one child, she said.

Which was not exactly true. Silence often got filled with things not exactly true. Jane did in fact imagine having a child somewhat often, and rather more often lately. Images of it appeared in various mirages. She was holding a baby in bed just after birth; a child was walking unsteadily across a lawn, arriving to her outstretched arms. Though in the vision Jane somehow looked more like her older sister, Marian, a real mother, and the child was teetering on familiar grass in front of Marian’s house in New Jersey.

I’m going to have lots, Harry said.

Really? Lots?

Loads. Their mother is going to crank them out.

That’s nice, she said. A breeze swept in the window and she lowered herself into the warm water.

As soon as I sort myself out and start making a living, he said.

Oh, not yet.

No, not yet. He took a puff of his cigar. I’m not ready to sort myself out yet.

So you don’t worry then?

About what?

The future.

Why should I worry about the future?

I don’t know. People do.

People are idiots, Harry said. He watched the cigar roll in his fingers. At least the ones who worry.

The smell of grilled meat wafted into Jane when she stepped out of her room. At the far end of the rounded hall where music played quietly with a pulsing beat was a sitting area and a fire going in a wide fireplace. Beryl was circling a large table set with red goblets and a turquoise tablecloth tasseled in gold. She wore a long dress from the sixties with an orange and black geometric pattern and cut-out back. Her lips were plum-colored, and long earrings dangled to her shoulders. Jane had on a blue slip dress she had unfurled from her bag and ironed with her hand
on the bed and a white flower snapped from the bush outside her window set in the knot at the back of her neck.

Beryl asked her to run down to Lana’s tent and tell her to come up. Don’t worry if you run into a warthog, she said. That’s just Freddie.

Jane followed the narrow path among bamboo trees, watching for animals. Someone had mentioned a hippo appearing the other day in the garden, which Jane thought alarming. Hippos apparently had vicious jaws and could run very fast. In the dusky light she made out bleached white skulls dotting the clearing by Lana’s tent. She stopped at a strange noise, then realized they were human noises of an intimate and animal nature drifting through the netting. She turned and retraced her steps. Then from a distance, and out of sight, she shouted that it was dinnertime. She waited for Lana’s breathless voice to answer, then heard the laughter following. When she returned to the house, her heart was beating chaotically, as it does after seeing a wild animal.

Once inside she found the night outside had quickly gone black.

An older servant in a white jacket passed her, carrying empty platters to the barbecue pit off the veranda where silhouettes stood before the coals and smoke. Two other servants were lighting candles on the long table. New staff kept appearing; Jane wondered how many there were working behind the scenes.

Pierre was sitting on the couch beside a girl of about twenty who had long shiny hair and wore a crocheted halter top.

Hey, beautiful, he said to Jane with his sleepy pleased look. Pierre looked at women as if he’d already slept with them. Did you meet Lulu? This is Beryl’s stepdaughter. Lulu lifted her hand, palm up, unsmiling. Her bad posture did not diminish her beauty.

A couple in their fifties stood at a bar crowded with bottles and an ice bucket. They introduced themselves as Chip and Deedee. The man was in all khaki, and the woman looked as if she’d come straight from a country club with a pink polo shirt and a tortoiseshell hair band. They spoke in thick British accents and were getting drinks for the two men whom she’d seen come off the plane. Jane picked up that Chip and Deedee lived a few farms away and had recently had a run-in with a croc. It had nearly attacked a servant.

What it was doing way up on the drive, Chip said, shaking his head.

Deedee was picking up one bottle after another. Do they have the decent vodka? she said.

The men from the plane were introduced. Roy the fair one lit a cigarette. He shook Jane’s hand. Damian, wiry and unshaven, had a surprising smile. They all seemed to know each other.

At dinner everyone drank with enthusiasm. On one side Jane had Chip, whose face grew pink, and Roy on the other side. He turned out to be a doctor, from South Africa. What does everyone think is going to become of that president of yours? he said, but didn’t wait for an answer. I think you need more wine. He refilled her glass. You leaving that meat? He started to pick at the food on her plate. You don’t mind, do you? I eat nothing all week. I’m starving.

The children appeared in their nightclothes, bathed and brushed, to kiss their mother good night. They frowned toward Damian beside her. Their nanny stood near, then followed their orderly procession up the stairs.

Roy was whispering in Jane’s ear. I don’t have a wife yet, but I’m working on it. I do want one. I’d be a good husband. I mean it, if I were married to you I’d come home every night and never stop shagging you. Jane looked at him. His eyes were bloodshot and nearly crossed. He seemed to be talking to someone else. So—what d’you say?

I think not, she said.

Why not?

Otherwise occupied, she said.

What, that guy? He pointed down the table to Harry.

Lana had her arms draped over Harry’s shoulders and was speaking close to his ear. Harry cut his meat, chewing, listening with a pleasant expression. Lana drew back her face to look at him, as if waiting for an answer. He nodded, thinking. Across the table, Don frowned at them.

That kid? Roy said. His head rolled back in amazement. Some slacker? I bet he still lives with his mother and has a motorcycle and goes hang-gliding.…

Paragliding, actually, Jane said.

Exactly! Roy’s hands went up. What’re you doing with him? Don’t you want a man?

Guess not, Jane said, smiling.

Okay, he said. Then his face went stony and he swiveled away from her to Deedee on the other side. Tell me, when was the last time you performed surgery? he said.

Oh God, she said, not for ages.

Released from conversational duties—on her other side Chip was describing generator problems—Jane looked around the table. With everyone engaged she was free just to look. She watched everyone’s hands. Some were holding cigarettes, some set down a glass. Lulu fingered a choker with bitten fingernails as Pierre rolled a cigarette, listening to her with low-lidded merriment. Lana gestured as if she were opening a fan. Beryl held a long strand of her hair across her bottom lip, watching Damian draw something with his knife on the table.

The wings are double like this for sexual attraction, Jane heard him say, not for flight at all. Harry’s hand lay along the back of Lana’s chair. Looking at his hand gave Jane a peaceful feeling.

For dessert out came a layered kiwi tart with strawberries and a silver bowl of whipped cream. Lana, noticing Don’s expression, brought him over to the couch by the fire and settled him beside her. She crossed her boots on his knees, anchoring him down. Soon his face lost its frown and grew flushed and merry. His hand disappeared in her clothing.

At the end of the table Jane heard Beryl whisper to Damian, Man is way out of his depth. Low laughter followed.

Jane went back to the room to use the bathroom and found a candle lit on the bedside table and ironed white sheets folded back like in a hotel. She hadn’t planned on turning in yet, but it looked so inviting and she lay down for a moment. As she closed her eyes she found herself searching for the place inside her that didn’t care whether Harry came in or not.

When she woke it was dark and his body was beside her, asleep. She felt like an animal in the woods watching the lights in a house, waiting for him to come out and look for her. People said that men were the ones who thought about sex all the time. She was like a man then. Except that after sex she thought about it more, not less. It didn’t seem to matter that sex didn’t necessarily get you where you wanted to be: satisfied with yourself. But you had momentary satisfactions, the beautiful release and a
feeling of wholeness. Sex was the wire in the dark, a jolt to the spirit, like the shocks they give people with massive coronaries to get things beating again. His arms around her infused her with calmness and she felt herself shimmering.

In the morning she woke. She pictured him reaching over and pulling her across the sheet or dropping a heavy hand on her hip to check she was still there before dragging her over. She waited for his head to turn and his eyes to open in her direction. The hope felt like a thread whipped in a frantic wind; it was terrible.

He stirred and her heart leapt, vibrating. He rolled to his side of the bed and stood up. His hair stuck out like dark straw. He pawed through a crumpled pile of clothes. The muscle in his lower back was a nice square shape. He found a shirt. He pulled on dusty shorts with an automatic air, then, noticing her there, said, Coffee, in a neutral not unfriendly way and left the room. Her gaze fixed itself on where he’d been and she felt as if she were dangling from a hook high in a tree.

For God’s sakes, she said to herself. She was here for a reason. She had a story to write, something more substantial than her pathetic yearnings.

At breakfast the reports of early rains washing out the border crossing to Uganda at Malaba made them decide to stay in Naivasha another day. And Leonard was supposed to return that night. Any reason could change plans; no one objected.

Jane read her book on the veranda among red hibiscus trees. Harry returned from wandering around the farm with directions to a good flying place near Eldoret. A few hours later Jane was standing on the side of a treeless hill in tall dry grass, camera strap around her wrist, looking up the slope where Harry’s figure grew smaller as he trudged with his oversized knapsack to the top. The plain below was green and brown brush with wisps of smoke here and there.

Jane sensed movement nearby. Out of the beige grasses three small figures came running up the slope toward her, chests open, arms pumping. About ten feet from her they stopped abruptly, as if hitting a wall. Two boys and a girl stood staring.

Jambo, Jane said. Habari. Hello.

The boys giggled. Hello, they said, covering their mouths. Their T-shirts were in varying stages of disintegration. The girl wore a pink dress with torn ruffles. Her hand kept hold of the older boy’s as she regarded Jane with a penetrating frown.

Wewe kijiji? Jane pointed to the cluster of thatched huts farther down the rutted road where they had parked the truck. Direct translation: You village?

The children stared. Maybe she had the words wrong.

Pitcha, pitcha, said the biggest boy.

You want a picture? Jane said. She lifted her camera and they ducked into the grass, swatting at each other and laughing.

Okay. No picture. Jane turned and kept walking up the hill. The tops of the grass brushed her knees. The children followed. She stopped and turned; they stopped too, smiling. She went on and they followed. She arrived at a rock and sat.

The older boy pointed to Harry, now a silhouette on the moonlike curve of the hill. Mzungu?

He’s flying, Jane said. She put her arms out and flapped. She had picked up the word for bird. Ndege, she said.

The children stared at the tiny figure with incredulity, then back at Jane.

You English? said the tallest boy, surprising her.

No, American.

America, he said. San Francisco. You San Francisco?

No. I’m New York City.

America, said the boy, nodding. Monica Lewinsky.

Yes, said Jane. That’s right.

The three pairs of eyes, close to each other, did not take their gaze from her, sizing her up. No matter where you went, it was always the children who came up to strangers. They were interested.

Ndege? the smaller boy said, and pointed up the hill.

She nodded.

The children dissolved again in laughter.

It doesn’t look as if he’s getting any wind though, Jane said.

Harry had reached the top and was standing, unmoving in his helmet. The parachute was out of view.

The children sat on the ground, curling around each other. Children had time to chat with strangers.

You married? the boy said.

What? No. Not married. She held out her left hand as if in a Doris Day movie.

Babies?

No, no babies either.

You should have babies.

God, she thought, him too. You think so? she said.

The smaller boy jumped up, pointing up the hill. Harry was airborne, dangling below the fat caterpillar of the parachute.

He’s up, Jane said.

They watched him drift along in a straight line, not too high, as if sailing on a calm sea. He wasn’t riding a thermal, he was just being blown.

From below in the area of the huts came the sound of pots clattering and a woman calling. The smaller boy cuffed the back of the girl’s head and took off running. She didn’t flinch but stood, looking a little longer at Jane, as if to memorize her face, then took off, following. Jane thought how little she could envision what their lives were like.

She walked in the direction of Harry’s drifting. He was going fast now. She ran, feeling the curve of the hill as if it were the globe she was transversing. She stopped and walked, looking at her short boots, and thought how different she would feel if she were here alone. Even the air was different if someone was nearby and you were following him. Having spent a lot of time alone, she could easily imagine how it would feel if no one else were there, walking in the high grass, connected to the ground and grass. Images of other people would appear at the back of her mind in a sort of random collage. When you were alone, they visited you. With a person nearby, even if he was drifting through the air, you felt the lines attaching you and did not have the same inward gaze.