Green City in the Sun (28 page)

     "Hello," he called. "I see you're still up."

     Grace clutched the shawl over her breast. He had never visited her at night before.

     "I won't keep you," he said as he climbed the steps. "I know it's late, but I'm on my way home from a visit with the DO in Nyeri and thought I'd drop in at the house and have a talk with Valentine. But he's on safari again, so I looked over the ridge on the chance you might still be up, and I saw your light on. Here," He held out a brace of partridge. "These are for you."

     "Thank you! Do come in."

     When James, so tall and travel-dusty, filled her tiny living room, Grace was suddenly struck by how small and feminine her cottage seemed.

     "Would you like a cup of tea?" she asked.

     He hesitated, and when Grace lit more lamps, she saw that his manner was rather awkward. She put the kettle on to boil and measured three teaspoons into her china pot. "It's Brooke Bond's new Countess Treverton blend. Very expensive, but Rose gives me packets of it. Please sit down."

     "Are you sure I'm not keeping you up?"

     She sat in the second chair and folded her arms and saw that not only did James seem uncomfortable, but it appeared that something was troubling him.

     "I wasn't ready for bed yet," she said. "I still have a million things to do. Was your visit with the DO an official one?"

     "Yes. I got wind that some chaps from the Northern Frontier were sneaking cattle down this way from a quarantined area. They'll spread rinderpest like wildfire if they aren't caught. And there will go my entire herd! Anyway, patrols are out. I imagine they'll be caught. Oh, before I forget." He held out a leather saddlebag. "From the DO's wife. In appreciation for the tooth extraction, she said."

     Grace went through the bag like a child at Christmas. "Bless her!" she cried as she brought out a tin of mixed biscuits, a plum pudding, and jars of preserved ginger, jam, and honey.

     When she set the things aside and handed the bag back to him, Grace saw disturbed lines etched in his face. "James, is there something wrong?"

     He looked into the cold, dark fireplace and thought for a moment. Then
he said, "Some of my chaps have come down with dysentery, and I'm all out of cod-liver oil. I was wondering..."

     She rose and went to her medical cupboard. She came back with a bottle and placed it on the table between the two Morris chairs. "You're welcome to anything I have, James."

     "Thank you," he said, and then fell silent.

     They listened to the night for a few minutes, Grace wondering about the real reason for his visit. Then James finally said, "How is the clinic going?"

     "We're managing. But it's the
teaching
that's a problem. I've written so many letters requesting nurses and teachers to come and work in the villages. Instead, I'm getting an inspection team. But you know, James," she said, leaning toward him, "I've come up with a plan. I was wondering if Lucille would help me out while the Society members are here. Perhaps be teaching a class when they come through. Bible stories, that sort of thing. It would certainly help. What do you think? Shall I ask her?"

     He looked at her squarely, and Grace knew the answer before he said, "Lucille won't help you."

     "Why not?"

     "Because she was the one who sent the letter of complaint to the Mission Society."

     Grace stared at him.

     James looked away. "I found out this morning. She told me."

     The night seemed to creep in closer, as if trying to peer through the windows of the cottage. The oleander bushes near the veranda rustled; then came the nervous twitter of hyenas on the scavenge. Finally the kettle whistled, and Grace went to it. She poured half the hot water into the teapot, then stopped, put the kettle down, and came back into the living room.

     "Why, James?" she whispered. "Why did she do it?"

     "I'm afraid I really don't know. I was as shocked as you are. I can't really explain what's happened to Lucille." He regarded Grace with an unhappy expression. "When we were first married and I brought her to East Africa ten years ago, she seemed so enthusiastic about living here. But you see, she and her mother had been very close. Lucille's father died when she was a child, and she has no brothers and sisters. When I met her, she and her mother
were living above a small shop, quite devoted to one another. There was bad feeling when we left. Lucille and her mother parted badly. Mrs. Rogers didn't want her daughter to be a settler's wife."

     James reached into his shirt pocket for a pipe. He made a ritual of filling and lighting it, then continued. "So we decided the best thing would be to bring Lucille's mother out here when we were settled. East Africa is a good place to spend one's retirement, provided one has a proper house and comfortable living. We started saving and planning. Mrs. Rogers was going to live with us at Kilima Simba. I believe that dream was what made the shock of her new life bearable to Lucille. And it was a shock at first. She cried for days when she saw the ranch. But then she began exchanging letters with her mother and sending brochures about the protectorate, and her mother warmed to the idea. It was to be this year that she was going to join us."

     "What happened?"

     "She died, quite suddenly and unexpectedly. She was only fifty years old. Lucille was beside herself. It was just two years ago now, and as the war was still on, there was no way Lucille could go back home for the funeral. I believe that was when she began to change."

     "Change? How?"

     "In small ways, so small that I only see them now in retrospect. She brought out the old family Bible and began reading it in the evenings. Then she got involved with the Methodists down in Karatina. When she heard that Valentine's sister was coming here to set up a mission, she was ecstatic."

     "I see," said Grace as she got up and went back to the kitchen. After pouring the tea and handing him a cup, she said quietly, "Did she tell you what she wrote in her letter to the Society?"

     "No." James stirred his tea thoughtfully, watching the spoon go 'round and 'round. "I think now I made a mistake bringing Lucille to East Africa. She was only nineteen, and I was twenty-two. And Lucille had rather a romantic streak in her. When we finally arrived at Kilima Simba, she was speechless with disappointment."

     "A lot of wives, and husbands, too, are shocked when they see their new land for the first time."

     "I should have known better. I was born here, grew up here. I should
have seen how different this life was from the one she'd been brought up in." James set aside his cup and went to stand by the fireplace. His normally calm demeanor was marred by abrupt gestures and a barely constrained tension in his body. "Grace, if you only knew how terrible I feel about all this."

     "And I thought Lucille liked me," she said softly.

     "But she does like you." Then he added more quietly, "We both do."

     Grace could not bring herself to look at him, would not allow herself to succumb to his tone, to his masculine presence filling her house. She was suddenly angry and sad at the same time and confused by the betrayal of a friend. "Whatever shall I do when the delegation comes?"

     "I would like to help."

     She shook her head. "I'm afraid there's nothing you can do. I was wrong to think of deceiving them. The people in Suffolk are contributing to what they think is a Christian ministry. They have a right to know where their money is going." She stood and squared her shoulders. "I shall simply have to think of a way to appease them, or convince them of the value of what I'm trying to do here, or maybe even come up with a way to do without them. I don't know."

     James stepped close to her; his eyes caught hers and held them. "Grace, tell me this won't hurt our friendship."

     Her throat tightened. "Nothing in the world could do that, James."

     "You will still visit us at the ranch, won't you?"

     But she hesitated.

     He spun around and drove a fist into his palm. "How did things get so mucked up? I thought she was happy. She
seemed
happy." His body taut, he paced as far as the tiny room would allow. "She's been so good with the farm and with the children. In ten years she's never complained." He stopped suddenly and faced Grace with a pained expression. "Lucille's a good woman, and I don't know what I'd do without her. But ... I was beside myself this morning, when she told me about the letter. I shouted. I said some unkind things. I didn't mean them, but all I could think of was—" He lowered his voice. "Grace, you're one of the best things to happen to this country and to me. I could only think that if Lucille had somehow ruined our friendship...."

     White ants rustled in the thatch overhead; lizards scuttled along walls
and timbers. The house was alive, as were the garden and forest beyond. The two in the cottage listened to the chorus of life all around them, lost for a moment in each other's eyes, caught in the nearness of their bodies and the intimacy of the moment. Then James said, "The hour's late. You should go to bed, Grace."

     "Surely you're not going home now! It's not safe."

     "Rose has offered me a shakedown up at the house."

     Grace wanted to say,
Stay here with me
, but instead, she took a lantern from a hook and handed it to him, saying softly, "The path from here up to the house is dangerous at night, James. Please take care.

     She opened the door, and he walked onto the veranda. Replacing his wide-brimmed hat on his head, James turned and looked down at her with eyes cast in shadow. "I promise you one thing, Grace. I will do everything in my power to help you."

P
EONY SAT WITH HER FACE BURIED IN HER HANDS, HER THIN
shoulders hunched over, shaking with sobs. "I don't know what I'm gonna do!" she wailed. "I shall kill myself!"

     "Oh, hush," said Miranda as she held a glass of brandy to the girl. "Here. Drink this and stop crying. You won't solve anything that way."

     The maid lifted her swollen face. "Solved! How can this be
solved?
"

     "There's ways."

     Her eyes widened. "Oh, no, mum," she breathed. "I could never do
that.
"

     Miranda sat at her desk and drummed a fingertip on the green blotter. What a day it had been! First there was the stealing discovered in the kitchen and the mess of having to find out which of the boys was doing it. Then one of the guests had come down with fever and panicked all the others. Now
this.

     Peony, Miranda's English maid, was a pale young girl who had come out on the last boat with her fiance, who had died of blackwater in Mombasa.
Miranda had hired her and put her to work. Peony had performed cheerfully and diligently these past eight months and was saving her money to go back to England.

     "How far along are you?" Miranda asked.

     "'Bout two months."

     "And the father? Does he know about it?"

     Peony looked miserable. "He don't know, mum. He's long gone from here. I—I don't even know his name."

     Miranda shook her head in disgust. These girls! Like rabbits, some of them, coming to Kenya, showing no discretion, going mad at the sight of so many men. One settler wife in the Limuru district made a lucrative business in performing abortions.

     Miranda stood up and went to the window. It seemed to her that each time she looked out Nairobi got busier. Was it her imagination, or did five new motorcars appear each time her back was turned, a hundred new men looking for adventure, twenty new women looking for rich husbands? She was beginning to hate Kenya.

     Valentine had not come by to see her since their one night together.

     Across the way a wagonful of Dutch farmers pulled up. They would spend the day buying, trading, collecting mail, and then return to their hardscrabble acres at the back of beyond. Good God, thought Miranda. Why did they look so proud? What was so honorable about plowing dirt where nothing grew except malaria and sleeping sickness?

     She hadn't gotten even so much as a note from Valentine. Early that next morning he had crept from her bed and returned with his wife to his plantation in the north. In all the time since he hadn't stopped by. And he'd been in Nairobi. Miranda had seen him.

     When Peony started to cry again, Miranda's bitterness grew. The perverse way life sometimes worked! There was that girl, hysterical because she was pregnant after a one-night fling with a nameless boy, and here was Miranda, desperate to get pregnant but unable to.

     She stared down at the street. One of the Boer wives was pregnant and flaunting it in public. Times were changing. Confinement and hiding pregnancy were a thing of the past. The war had done away with the old conventions
and clothing fashion. There were maternity frocks now, and women paraded their bellies with pride.

     
Except for me
, Miranda thought, resenting the young Boer wife.
I should be walking down the street like that.
Word would get around that it was the earl's baby she carried; he would set her up in some nice place, perhaps a house in Parklands, where she could live like an empress while someone managed the hotel for her and deposited the profits into her account. But she needed a baby to make that come true, and for that she needed Valentine in her bed again.