Jane (12 page)

I tried to calm myself, but my heart was pounding. My fingers clutching the rail tightened, and my suddenly flushed face steamed against the cool sea air.

His hands on me were possessive. Entitled. I liked the feeling … yet somehow it repelled me. Thus entrapped by my ambivalence, I remained silent, still.

He took this for assent.

The hands slid under my arms and from behind cupped both breasts. I thought then,
This is wrong. I need to see his face. He needs to see mine.
I tried to turn, but he’d buried his face in the hair at my neck and his hands were seeking the front opening of my gown, reaching down to the tender skin. His fingers pinched my nipples.

I cried out with pain and forcefully swiveled to face him, to order him to stop. What I saw was a cruel mouth and eyes glittering dangerously in the moonlight.

“No,” I said.

His reply was to kiss me hard, so hard he bruised my lips.

My self-possession returned in a rush, and I placed my palms on his shoulders and pushed him away.

“Stop.
Now.
”

There was no surprise in his expression. No hurt at the rejection. No remorse for what he must have known had caused me pain. There was, in fact, nothing in his expression at all.

This frightened me.

He moved to grab me again, and this time I lifted one arm between us.

“Touch me again and I’ll geld you right here.”

He smiled then with the greatest calm. “You wanted this, Janie. You asked for it.”

“Maybe I did. But I don’t want it now.”

All at once he stepped back.

I resisted the urge to dart away from him. Instead I straightened my spine and looked Ral in the eye, willing him to withdraw farther, to give me space for a dignified exit.

An infinitely long moment passed. Then he complied, flashing his most charming smile, as if all was forgiven. But I knew very well that behind the smile was the heated desire to strike me, crush my face with his fist.

I moved slowly from Ral’s presence, feeling the smooth wood of the deck beneath my feet, shaking with fury at myself for having so disastrously misjudged a man’s character.

I would never let it happen again.

*   *   *

From the “evening of the missionaries,” as Father and I had taken to calling that contentious dinner, Captain Kelly had regarded his wild woman (as he insisted on calling me) with a sight more respect than before, more than simply reminding me to take those “four grains of quinine” every day for the fortnight before the Porter Expedition reached the Ogowe River.

Kelly had extended to me a standing invitation to the bridge for company and conversation. He said he’d not had occasion to converse with “a woman of parts” in a very long time. We had crossed the Bay of Biscay and steamed past Portugal, heading for the equator. As we sailed, Kelly occasionally allowed me, under his supervision, to take the wheel, regaling me all the while with stories about West Africa and the legendary “Old Coasters” he had known. These colorful characters were the ones who always had the most outlandish tales to tell. It was they who gave the continent its reputation, much of it deserved. Like the apocalyptic epidemics of fever that ran rampant in towns and villages, carrying off nearly the whole population in a matter of days. Or the city cemetery that at all times kept two freshly dug graves open and ready for the Europeans who would most certainly occupy them by day’s end. I stopped counting the number of times Captain Kelly unconsciously said, “He’s dead now.” And it was not lost on me that the shipping company had not bothered to sell me or my father return-trip tickets.

I’d taken to bringing to the bridge my thumbed-nearly-to-death copy of Mary Kingsley’s
Travels in West Africa,
mostly to compare the author’s observations of these very same sights and the turns of phrase she had used to describe them. Very early on I’d admitted to Kelly that my favorite heroine, in whose footsteps—to my amazement—I was now following, was a superior writer to myself. No praise of the beauty and mystery that I was witnessing came close to Miss Kingsley’s prose.

Beneath us, Ral and Father walked into view on the foredeck. They were deep in conversation as they frequently were now, even more so since the night Ral Conrath had accosted me. I had wished very dearly to tell my father what I perceived about the character of the man who would be leading us into Africa. But I was not at all certain what it was that needed saying. The truth was, I had led him on.
You wanted this, Janie.
That had been the case, at least until the moment he had laid his hands on my body and I, with some until then unknown instinct, sensed a wrongness, a defect in him. A ragged edge to the man’s soul. One that made his touch unbearable, even as my desire welcomed it.

But each time I’d found a moment to tell Father of my fears, his excitement for our venture and his ardent belief in Conrath’s abilities smothered my best intentions. Only the night before, when I’d determined nothing would stop me from making my thoughts known, Father—his eyes alive—had grabbed my hand on the rail and with emotion choking his voice said, “We’re going to find those bones, Jane. I can feel it in my own!”

My father was a man of the world with six African expeditions under his belt, a whole life in America, and another at the top of his chosen field in England. And what was I? A sheltered girl who had spent the whole of her existence in a small university town.

I must allow Ral Conrath the benefit of the doubt, I decided. He was certainly a cad with women, but I’d been stupid and gullible. He had so far proved his administrative talents in arranging the expedition. I must set my mind at ease and let the adventure unfold. Like my father, I should envision the very best of outcomes. For if the Porter Expedition did, in fact, uncover the fossils of Darwin’s missing link in Africa, Father and I would become a very part of the history of the evolutionary theory.

And nothing could possibly make me any happier.

Libreville

After the cooling sea breezes aboard the
Evangeline,
I was altogether unprepared for the skin-searing noontime heat when we docked at Libreville. Yet I was amazed how strangely soothing I found it. Memories assailed me of England’s frigid mornings and unremitting grey skies, the coal soot in the air, the dormant trees in winter, and the crunch of frozen ground beneath my feet.

The city of Libreville, I’d learned from Captain Kelly, had received its name, “Free Town,” from the shipload of slaves rescued at sea by the French in 1849, set upon northern Gabon’s shores, and given their freedom. It was a poor sort of port after Liverpool. Ramshackle wooden warehouses with peeling paint and corrugated metal roofs lined small rickety wooden piers. Here the “stevedores” were half-dressed natives whose black skin decorated with intricately designed scars glistened with the sweat of laboring under a merciless sun.

Clutching my black portmanteau, I stood gazing around and watched as the Porter Expedition supplies were unloaded under the vigilant eye of Ral Conrath, he resorting more to hand gestures than to verbal commands, as he seemed altogether helpless when it came to the French or Gabonese languages.

I had already said a poignant farewell to my mentor, Captain Kelly, he plying me with last-minute advice. “Keep a hat on yer head, and never turn yer back on a Frenchman.”

Father was uncharacteristically beside himself. Any more animated, I thought, and he would be dithering. But everything did run smoothly, and soon our belongings and supplies had been loaded onto several rickety wagons that lacked only teams to pull them. When I had inquired where the horses were, a native—more clothed than the rest and who appeared to be the dock foreman—replied,
“Chevaux mort par les tsé-tsé.”
Horses are killed by the tsetse flies.

Suddenly human “teams” of four raggedly dressed Negroes collected themselves along the front shafts of the vehicles and, gripping them with bare hands, began trotting away. In the next moment, Ral Conrath propelled me to a rickshaw in which sat a very pretty middle-aged lady in a proper English gown, proper except for the missing stays and corsets. Without them, her ample figure—bosom and belly and thighs—seemed to overlap one onto the other, like great folds of melted candle wax. She was smiling and holding out her hand to me as Conrath helped me into the seat with its tattered satin cover.

“Miss Porter, meet Mrs. Fournier. She’s our hostess while we’re in Libreville. I’m riding with your father right behind you.”

As he strode away, our mode of locomotion arrived—again human and native, but this lot neatly dressed in white breeches and jackets with bright red cummerbunds wound around their waists. Two took the front, pulling, two the back, pushing.

“Welcome, my dear!” Mrs. Fournier cried. Despite her name, and her planting a kiss on either of my cheeks the way they did in France, she spoke in the King’s English. In midgreeting, our faces bumped as the chariot lurched into forward motion. We laughed, and Mrs. Fournier sat back fanning herself one moment, fanning me the next, and began to talk, a pastime I would come to know was my hostess’s favorite of all.

“When I learned that an esteemed professor at Cambridge was coming to Libreville, with his
daughter,
no less, I determined I must have you stay with me. There is a hotel, of course, but it is a dreadful place. You must take my word on that. Things are stolen all the time from the rooms, and the food is atrocious. I think you will be most comfortable…”

I was grateful for Mrs. Fournier chattering on, for it gave me leave to take in the sights from the go-cart (that was what my hostess called it) moving through the Libreville streets, most of which were dusty dirt or, the finer ones, gravel.

There was so much to see!

I could barely contain myself from gawking at the native man whose entire costume seemed to be the fabric of an umbrella with the stick and all the ribs removed from it. There was another in nothing but a loincloth, and one in a garment fashioned from a burlap rice bag. The ladies were a sight more fashionable. One ample-figured matron wore a bright printed dress yoked at the neck and falling in billows to the ground, a matching handkerchief binding her bristly hair. Her companion of a younger generation wore nothing but patterned fabric wrapped around her as a skirt, with conical breasts swinging rhythmically, one arm balancing a basket full of yams on her head.

Roaming the streets there were more animals than people and vehicles combined—goats, sheep, pigs, chickens, and numberless skinny yellow dogs. One of these canines fought with a black buzzard twice its size over an unrecognizable maggot-ridden carcass.

“I suppose the one unbreakable law is to never expose yourself to the sun’s direct rays,” Mrs. Fournier told me. I nodded, trying to pay attention to the well-meaning woman. But now as we passed from the bustle of dockside, there were structures to be seen, of many sizes and varieties, but hardly any of them remotely familiar to my eye. A street of native houses was terribly poor—painted wood bungalows with tin roofs and mud-and-palm-leafed huts—though each boasted its own small shop where the wares—iron pots, bolts of gaily colored textiles, tin basins, and bottles of American rum—were proudly displayed out the front.

Of course there was a cathedral—the French were such good Catholics. Except for a few European-style houses, it seemed the only solid structure in the whole ramshackle quarter of town, its large painted stones the blinding white of skeletal remains.

Strange sights were hardly my only experiences. Unexpected and breathtaking stenches assailed my nostrils, smells the sources of which I did not wish to contemplate. A moment later, the sweetest fragrance of a flowering tree would overtake and conquer the sickening miasma. Then I would be forced to slap at myself as a tea-saucer-sized beetle came nipping at my neck.

“But this is a
tame
bit of the tropics,” Mrs. Fournier insisted. “If you don’t count the fevers carrying away your husband and friends and servants, really a lady’s biggest worry is running out of hairpins.” Mrs. Fournier flicked a large mosquito that had come to rest on my cheek. “Pesky creatures. I’m sure you’ve been told a hundred times that your mosquito netting at night is as important as breathing.
Becomba lumbo!
” she called to the uniformed go-cart Negroes.

*   *   *

The coast road out of town gave way to a broad track shaded very pleasantly by tall pepper and eucalyptus trees. There were the baobabs with their massive trunks, or “monkey breadfruits” as Ernst Haeckel called them, claiming the trees lived to be five thousand years old. And now, to my utter delight and amazement, stretched before us on either side a row of “flamboyant trees,” most aptly named for their spreading crowns of vermillion flowers, bright green, feathery leaves, and dark brown beans as long as a man’s forearm.

I settled back into the go-cart seat thinking that if a person could die of contentment, I might end up a corpse in one of those open graves always kept ready and waiting in the European cemetery.

My African adventure had well and truly begun, and I had been on the continent a mere three-quarters of an hour.