Green City in the Sun (38 page)

     Grace, numb, moving like an overrehearsed actor, watched little Njeri come shyly out of the car, The girl stayed close by Rose, as if afraid. Grace looked at the child with sharp affection; Njeri was the baby she had lifted from Gachiku's womb. "Njeri," she said, bending down, "don't you want to go home and see your mama?"

     The nine-year-old hung back and shook her head.

     "She's become quite attached to me, I'm afraid," Rose said with a laugh, patting the girl on the head. "Aren't you, Njeri? You should have seen the attention she got in Europe. And she's such a help to me. She loves to spend hours brushing my hair. Njeri can go home later. She wants to stay and help me sort my new yarn."

     Mona was watching. She swallowed back her jealousy and pain and reached for her aunt's hand.

     Grace stared at Rose. This was all too unreal. Here was Rose after an eight-month absence, acting as if she had just arrived for tea! Why wasn't she asking about Arthur? About Valentine? And why had Mona come back with her instead of staying behind at the academy?

     Grace's head swam. She wasn't ready for all this—the homecoming and the leave-taking with James.

     "Auntie Grace," said Mona, tugging her hand, "are you crying because of me?"

     She looked down at her niece and said, "I'm happy because you're home and also sad because Uncle James is going away. He and Aunt Lucille are going to live in Uganda."

     Mona looked up at James, her eyes round. "Are Gretchen and Ralph going, too?"

     "I'm afraid so," he said.

     Then Mona, too, looked sad, and tears formed in her eyes.

     Grace knelt and took the girl's face in her hands. "Don't worry, Mona," she said softly. "You and I still have each other." She thought:
You may have to come and live with me. It's all too strange. Your mother seems less present, less real than ever. I will mother you, Mona; you will be the daughter my body will never have. There is a love emptiness in you, dear child, as there now is in me. We need each other.

     "Where is Valentine?" Rose suddenly asked.

     "I'
M TELLING YOU
, Treverton, London has got to be made to listen!" Brigadier Norich-Hastings put down his glass and strode to the lead-paned window that gave onto a spectacular view of Mount Kenya. "We need to have one of us go and present our case in person to His Majesty's government."

     "Hugh is right," said Hardy Acres from the deep comfort of a wing chair.

     Valentine was sitting behind his desk, chair rocked back and feet propped up. He swirled his glass and watched the whiskey go 'round and 'round.

     A fourth man in Valentine's study, Malcolm Jennings, was a rancher from the Rift Valley who owned more than a hundred thousand choice acres in the Central Province and who therefore had a personal interest in the colony's politics. He hadn't spoken yet, but he did now. "South Africa's got the right idea. We should follow its example and form a white union. Say, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanganyika. Maybe even Northern Rhodesia. We need to reinforce the policy of white domination in East Africa, remind the wogs who really rule here."

     "I'm bloody sorry
this
was printed," said Acres, flinging a Kenya newspaper to the floor. His friends knew what he was referring to: the white paper published recently in London by Lord Passfield, the new colonial secretary. In it he withdrew his support of the white settler demands in Kenya and stated that "the British objective in the Colony was a ministry representing an electorate in which
every
section of the population finds an effective and adequate vote," adding that this was very nearly impossible to achieve in a country where less than one percent of the population had the vote!

     "If the wogs read
this,"
said Acres, "it'll start trouble."

     "Trouble's already started," said the brigadier grimly. "Passfield's forbidden the governor to restrict meetings of the Kikuyu Central Association. He's bloody well
inviting
them to start a revolution! Now they're asking for land grants in the Highlands. Before you know it, the wogs will get permission to grow coffee!"

     The three men looked expectantly at their host. Valentine appeared not even to be listening to them. His dark eyes were staring moodily at a photograph in a silver frame on his desk.

     He was thinking of Arthur. He shouldn't have hit him so hard, but the boy did infuriate him at times. Where had the child gotten such peculiar notions? Here it was May, and Arthur hadn't even touched the Christmas presents his father had given him: the set of toy soldiers with miniature cannon; the rifle; the hunting knife.

     He picked up the photograph and looked hard at it. His heart broke at the sight of Arthur's innocent, cherubic face, the sweet little smile, the khaki shorts he never seemed to keep buttoned.
My son
, cried Valentine's tormented mind.
You are what I live for, what I built this house for. I never want to hurt you. I just want you to grow up to be a man.

     "Treverton?" said Hardy Acres.

     
I'll make it up to you, my son. I'm sorry I hit you. I promise you I won't do it again....

     "Valentine?" said Malcolm Jennings. "Are you with us?"

     He looked up. "I beg your pardon?" He put the picture down and got up to go to the whiskey cart. "I'm not worried about an uprising. All my chaps ever want to do is sit under a tree and drink beer."

     "Then you're blind, Treverton," said Jennings.

     Valentine ignored the effrontery. His thoughts were still upon Arthur, wondering if maybe it was time to take the boy on his first hunting safari.

     "We came here for your opinion in this matter," said Brigadier Norich-Hastings. "Talk to us, Valentine."

     "My chaps have never had it so good," he said distractedly. "I give them all the americani and bicycles they want. They're as docile as sheep. And they'll stay that way as long as I continue to treat them right."

     The three men exchanged a look. The brigadier said, "Valentine, open your eyes! Some of these wogs are starting to grouse that the Highlands are rightfully theirs and that they never voluntarily gave them up!"

     Valentine refilled his glass, stared at it thoughtfully, then took a drink and turned to his companions. "Who were you thinking of sending to London?"

     "We thought you would be good, Valentine."

     "Me!"

     "After all, you hold a seat in the House of Lords. Your name isn't without certain influence. And you're a good speaker. They'll listen to you.

     Valentine rubbed his chin. The thought of returning to England did not appeal in the least. The last time he had been there was at an exhibition in 1924, when he had represented Nairobi coffee, now called Kenya coffee. And in Rose's one letter from Suffolk she had described England as being just as cold and damp and unwelcoming as ever.

     "Well? What do you say?"

     "Perhaps . . ." He could take Arthur with him. Get the boy away from Rose's and Grace's feminizing influence.

     "We haven't much time. The situation is getting more and more serious every day. If we're going to hang on to our land, we'll need the support of His Majesty's government."

     "I say," said Hardy Acres, coming to his feet, "isn't that your car? The one you sent to the train station?"

     Valentine went to the window and looked out. The Cadillac was pulling up the drive, empty but for the African chauffeur.

     He walked out onto the veranda and shielded his eyes from the sun. A stiff breeze swept across the five thousand acres of lush coffee bushes and stirred his hair. This was the very spot he had stood upon ten years before, describing his dream to Rose and Grace. The scene which stretched away before him now was the very vision he had had in his mind on that long-ago day. "Where is the memsaab?" he asked the driver.

     "She has gone with Memsaab Daktari, bwana," the man said, pointing to the ridge.

     "H
ELLO THERE
! W
ELCOME
home!" he called, taking off his hat and waving it at Rose and Grace.

     Rose waved back, then said to her sister-in-law, "That silly Harold. The notions he gets into his head!"

     "What do you mean?"

     "Look at Bellatu! Of
course
, we have money!"

     Puzzled, Grace watched Rose pick her way delicately down the path to where Valentine greeted her with a kiss on the cheek. "I missed you," they said together.

     Then a miniature person came running, down below them, from the doorway of the maternity hut. "Mama!" called Arthur, his chubby little legs pumping.

     Valentine looked down. "What are you doing in there!" he shouted, his voice ringing across the river. "I've told you not to go in there anymore!"

     Arthur stopped short and stared as his father flew down the hill. "You deliberately defied me!" Valentine said when he reached him. He took Arthur by the collar and shook him.

     Up on the ridge Grace and James watched. When she saw Arthur suddenly collapse to the ground, kicking and writhing, Grace gave out a cry and ran down the path.

     By the time James and Rose joined them, Grace had managed to wedge a stick between Arthur's clenched teeth. He was twisting and turning in the dirt, eyes rolled back in his head, strange sounds coming from his throat. The adults stared down in horror; Mona came up silently.

     It ended as quickly as it had begun. Grace started to lift the unconscious boy into her arms, but Valentine stepped in. Cradling him against his chest, he followed his sister into the clinic hut, where Grace did a thorough examination of Arthur.

     Finally she said, "Epilepsy," and Valentine shouted, "No!"

     "I've told you before to get the boy to a specialist," said Grace. "Now you'll
have
to do something!"

     "There is nothing wrong with my son!"

     "Damn it, Valentine, there is! And if you don't take him, then
I
will!"

     He glared at his sister, matched her stubborn will heartbeat for heartbeat; then his shoulders slumped slightly.

     "There are specialists in Europe," Grace said more gently, "men who are doing research on this condition."

     "On insanity, you mean."

     "Epilepsy has nothing to do with insanity. It has nothing to do with mental faculties at all. And epilepsy is nothing to be ashamed of. Julius Caesar had it. So did Alexander the Great."

     Valentine turned a malevolent look upon Rose. "This comes from your side of the family," he said in a tone that shocked them all. Then he gathered the limp body of his son into his arms and drew it tightly to him. He pressed his mouth to the mop of grapefruit-colored hair that was damp with perspiration. Arthur seemed so small, so fragile.
My son. The only son I will ever have.
When Rose reached out to the boy, Valentine stepped back and said, "Don't touch him."

     To Grace he said, "I will take him to England. I'll take him to every specialist in London. I'll go to the Continent if I have to. I'll spend every penny—" His voice broke.

     They watched him go down the veranda steps and up the path toward the house, Arthur's doll-like arms and legs flopping. Rose took a different path, the one that led through the forest to her eucalyptus glade; she went so quickly that she looked like a woman in flight. Little Njeri trotted behind like a puppy, while Mona hovered in the shadow of the veranda, uncertain of what to do. Then she, too, headed off in the direction her mother had taken.

     Out in the sunlight again, pushing hair from her face and taking in a deep breath, Grace looked around the little cluster of thatch buildings that was her mission. James came to stand at her side. "Are you going to be all right?" he asked.

     "Yes."

     He took her hand and held it tightly between his. "I'll stay awhile, Grace. Until Valentine leaves for England with the boy."

     But she turned to him and said, "No, James. You don't belong here anymore.
Your life lies far to the west, where Lucille and your children are waiting for you. They need you more than we do."