Green City in the Sun (31 page)

     "I don't like this, you know. I don't like it one bit. I'll go crazy if I don't get out."

     Miranda stood at the door with her hand on the knob. "You know that isn't possible."

     "Just for a walk! Ain't expectant mothers supposed to get exercise?"

     "The couple doesn't want you to be seen."

     "Who would know?
Please
, mum. Just let me get out for a bit. I won't do nothing, I promise."

     "Peony, we settled all that back in August. You agreed to abide by every condition they set down. If you take one step outside this room, the deal is off, and you're on your own, pregnant and penniless. Is that understood?"

     Peony toyed with a strand of her hair.

     Miranda smiled and said gently, "It'll all be worth it once it's over. You'll see. Just as long as you sit tight."

     Reaching at last for a sandwich and biting into it, the girl said, "Aw right, I won't go nowhere."

     When she left, Miranda turned the key in the lock.

     "M
Y MORNING SICKNESS
has stopped, but I've got the most unexpected craving for fish!" Miranda wrote in the letter to her sister in London. "My back aches, and I make frequent trips to the toilet; but it's only three more months, and then I shall be set up quite comfortably. Lord Treverton is building me the most beautiful house in Parklands. I'll move into it as soon as the baby is born. You will come and live with us. We shall have such a good life!"

     Miranda put her pen down, folded the sheet, and slid it into the envelope along with a photograph of herself in her maternity smock. The hour was late; as she started to wonder whether or not to work on enlarging her pillow tonight, she heard a sound beyond her door.

     Miranda froze. Her apartment was above the kitchen at the top of a private stairway; it was cut off from the rest of the hotel and guests. She looked at her clock. It was midnight.

     She listened. There was someone outside her door.

     Peony! Sneaking out after somehow picking the lock!

     Miranda jumped up and ran to the door, which she flung open to surprise the girl and grab her before she was seen. But Miranda received a shock.

     "Hello, darlin,"' said Jack West.

     She drew back.

     "You look as if you've seen a ghost. Don't you recognize your own husband?"

     "Jack!" she whispered. "I thought you were dead."

     "Yeah, well, I wanted it that way. Ain't ya gonna invite me in?"

     A stocky red-haired man in sweat-stained khaki and beard down his chest, he walked past her. He looked around the apartment. "You've done all right for y'self, Miranda. All right indeed."

     She quickly closed the door. "What are you doing here?"

     He turned and raised bushy orange eyebrows. "What am I
doing
here! Why, I'm yer husband, darlin'. Ain't I got a right to be here?"

     "No! Not after you abandoned me."

     "Abandoned! I told you I was going to Lake Victoria to look for hippo."

     "That was seven years ago. I never heard from you."

     "Well, yer hearing from me now. Ain't ya gonna offer me a drink?"

     Miranda tried to think. Her mind raced: the girl hidden upstairs; the pillow with the ties on it; Lord Treverton. She poured Jack a whiskey and said, "Where've you been all this time?"

     He sat in the very chair the earl had sat in six months ago and put his dirty boots on the footstool. "Here and there. The hippos didn't pan out, but I managed to make a bit of a profit on the war, scouting for the Germans and spying on the British. After that I did a little ivory poaching in the Sudan."

     "Why did you come back to Nairobi?"

     "Because I heard of a gold find in the Nyanza, and I aim to cash in on it."

     Miranda spoke with caution. "Then you're not here to stay?"

     "Not while there's gold to be found out there!" He tossed the whiskey down in one gulp and held his glass out for more. "Quartz reefs backing onto limestone have been spotted near Lake Victoria. They say they're just like the gold-bearing formations in Rhodesia. D'you know what gold fetches these days? Four pounds an ounce!"

     "Then why are you here and not
there?"

     The second glassful went down and he took a third. "I need a kit. I figure five salted mules and a couple of trusty wogs'll do it. Plus the equipment. That's what I'm in Nairobi for." When he'd drunk the third whiskey and a
flush had come to his cheeks, Jack West thoughtfully fingered his beard. "But you see, I don't have the money for all that. And when I heard that my own wife had a prosperous hotel in town, well..."

     Miranda turned abruptly and went to the small safe that stood beside her bed. "How much do you need?" she asked.

     "Now, now," he said, coming to his feet, "what's your hurry? Can't get fitted out at this hour, can I? The business part of our little visit can wait till morning."

     Miranda went cold. She turned and said, "Jack, we're not married anymore.

     "Of course we are!" He started toward her. "And by God, you've gotten to be a handsome woman in my absence."

     She backed away from him. She tried to think. Her plans, so fragile, so chancy... Jack could spoil it all. "When do you leave for the Nyanza?" she asked.

     "Tomorrow. As soon as I get my kit together. But right now I've got another sort of mining on my mind!"

     Miranda stood still and let him come nearer. Gold prospecting in Kenya, she knew, could take years. Once he was out of town, she would file for a proper divorce, as she should have done long ago. No one need know that he had come back or that she had seen him or that he was still alive. She would placate him, send him on his way....

     He was close enough for her to smell the whiskey on his breath, and when he reached for her, she didn't resist. She let him touch her. She thought of everything that was at stake. She closed her eyes.

G
RACE WAS DESPERATE
.

     In her six days of searching Nairobi for sources of financial aid, she had come up with very little. Although the East African Women's League had pledged support, and contributions were promised from the governor and other concerned people, the majority was of the shared opinion that as the sister of one of the wealthiest men in East Africa Grace didn't need their help. One had only to look at the ostentatious stone house Valentine had built for his mistress and bastard child to know that he could well afford to support his sister in similar style. If they'd only known. Grace had already gone to Valentine, and he had refused.

     It had not been easy for her to turn to him. She was already angry with him over the Miranda business. Poor Rose, as isolated as she was, had still heard the rumors and had come to Birdsong Cottage one night in a state of hysterics, saying that it was all her fault, that she wasn't a proper wife to Valentine, that she could produce only girl children or miscarriages. Grace had given her sister-in-law a sedative and taken her back up to the house,
where Valentine was not in residence because he had been in Nairobi visiting
that
woman.

     Grace looked up at the lowering sky. It was March now; the long rains were due to break. She knew she must be getting back up north before the roads became bogs and lakes, but first she had to find a way to make the mission hers again.

     The Reverend Thomas Masters from Uganda had turned out to be an abominable man.

     He had begun at once saving souls, pouring on the baptismal water and listening to the witnesses of illiterate Africans. He gave them
wazungu
names and promised them eternal life just for saying a few words in a language that they didn't understand. The Africans came to him because they wanted the magic and power of the white man's name, and as a consequence, the village was starting to be populated with Thomases, Johns, and Rachels. They mimicked his prayer words and thought they were becoming like the white man.

     The clergyman had also taken over control of the money sent by the Mission Society, requiring Grace to make written requests before buying supplies; she had to account to him for every inch of bandage, for every stitch of suture. And if he thought she was being wasteful, he forced her to make do with less.

     Through his prince-nez glasses and down his long, thin nose, the Reverend Thomas Masters found endless criticism of Grace Treverton. Especially on the issue of Wachera. He declared that he couldn't understand why Grace hadn't taken care of that problem long ago. "Don't just ignore her," he had said. "Bring her to Jesus. Once she walks in righteousness, the medicine woman will denounce her witchcraft, and the rest of her people will follow."

     Still, for the sake of receiving the financial support of the Mission Society Grace had tolerated everything until the night Mr. Masters had questioned her relationship with James Donald—a married man.

     James had come to visit her, arriving late one afternoon with a brace of spur fowl and some butter and cheese from his dairy, and he had sat and talked with Grace until well past sunset. The clergyman had come to the door to speak with Grace and had stood stock-still when he had seen Sir
James in her living room. Afterward had come the lecture on appearances and the responsibility of living like a Christian woman, of setting an example for the Africans, and Grace had told the clergyman to mind his own business. The exchange, she knew, had been reported to the Mission Society.

     That was when she had decided to seek Valentine's aid.

     She had found him in the northern acreage of the estate, atop Excalibur with whip in hand, overseeing the mulching and weeding of the seedlings. The long rains were due, and he was racing against time. While Grace talked to him, Valentine kept his eyes on the field hands, every so often shouting an order, interrupting her, his manner maddeningly fragmented. Sleepless nights were etched on his face; the obsession to create the wealthiest plantation in Kenya burned in his gaze. "Get on with it, Grace," he had said impatiently. "The rains will break any day now. You are taking up precious time."

     After she had stated her purpose, he had said, "I gave you two years, Grace. And here it is, you've been in Kenya for two years. And you've failed."

     "I haven't failed. I just need some help."

     "You swore up and down you didn't need me. You promised me you'd never bother me with that project of yours. Wahiro!" he called out. "Bring some more fertilizer down here. And tell them to spread it properly this time!"

     "Valentine—"

     "Healing them is one thing, Grace. I don't mind that. But teaching them,
educating
them, is another. Where would I be if these chaps suddenly decided to run things for themselves? Give them enough education, and they'll want to take over. And then we can all pack up and go back to England. Is that what you want?"

     Grace had burned with fury. She had wanted to lash out at him about Miranda and the baby, to remind him of poor Rose and little Mona, two years old and unloved, to point out what a mess he was making of his own life; but she had known that it would only create an ugly scene and that it would alienate her brother from her further. So she had decided to risk the trip down to Nairobi, aware of the impending rains and that the roads would soon be not only unusable but downright dangerous; more than one wagon or automobile had disappeared into a sudden muddy swamp with driver
and passengers never found. Her friends in Nairobi were her last hope. She had to get rid of the Reverend Thomas Masters.

     But now even her friends had not been able to offer sufficient aid. A bank loan was her last resort, although she had no idea how she was going to pay it back.

     She watched a dusty Model T rattle by, then crossed the dirt street to Hardy Acres's bank.