The Winter Rose

by Jennifer Donnelly

  "Won't be sitting on our arses for much longer," Maggie sighed. "Rains aren't far off now. And not before time. I'm sick of eating dirt."

  The dry season had turned the red earth of Thika into a fine dust that drifted from the roads and fields into houses and barns, over animals and people, giving everyone and everything a faint terra-cotta hue, but now a breeze rippled through the long grass of the veldt, and out on the horizon, north toward Mount Kenya, lightning flashed and thunder rumbled, ominous and low.

  "We'll be planting night and day soon. In about a week's time, I should think." She took a swallow of her drink, looking out over her land. "Seven hundred acres under coffee now. And another two hundred plowed. I wouldn't believe it if I couldn't see it with my own eyes. You're a devil of a worker, Bax."

  "Because you're a devil of a boss."

  Maggie flapped a hand at him and drained her glass. Margaret Carr was Sid Baxter's employer and his friend. A coffee planter, she was fifty-odd years old and five feet two inches high, but her voice, and her temper, made up for her diminutive stature. A widow--she'd lost her husband several years ago--and childless, she ran her farm single-handedly, relying on hired hands to help with the planting and harvesting.

  She sat like a man, her feet up on the railing of Sid's small porch, and swore like one, and worked like one. He'd seen her work from dawn until dusk in her fields, setting plants in the rain, picking the red coffee berries in the blazing sun. She wore a broad white topi on her head when she worked, a man's shirt rolled at the sleeves, and trousers held up with one of Mr. Carr's belts. She never wore skirts, not even the split style favored by the settlers' wives, not even when she went to town.

  Sid had met her six years ago, shortly after the supply ship he'd crewed on out of Gravesend, the Adelaide, had docked at Mombasa, an ancient Arab trading port on the coast of British East Africa. He'd gone ashore, intending to get back on the ship, which was headed next to Ceylon, but he'd drunk too much, passed out in a brothel, and was robbed blind. By the time he arrived at the dock--holding his trousers up with his hands because his belt had been stolen, too--the Adelaide was only a speck on the Indian Ocean.

  He'd paced back and forth on the dock, swearing frantically--and uselessly. A woman had been standing nearby, supervising the loading of a ploughshare, four crates of chickens, and six cows. When they were safely in her cart, she approached him.

  "You all right?" she asked.

  "Do I bloody look all right?" he yelled. He was desperate. The Adelaide had made him forget. The work, stoking the boiler, was crucifying. There were storms. He was often seasick. On the ship, it was all he could do to survive. On land, he would have time to think. Time to remember.

  "What happened?" she asked.

  He explained.

  "Ever drive oxen?"

  "No."

  "Ever plant coffee?"

  "No."

  "Are you strong?"

  "What's that to you, missus?"

  "I need help. My husband's dead and my headman's a drunk. I can't pay much, but you'll get plenty to eat, a bed, and your own hut. It's not much, the hut, but the roof's sound and it has a porch."

  "You want me to come with you?" Sid asked, astonished.

  "I need a new headman and you need work, don't you?"

  He thought about this. "I do," he finally said.

  "I'm a coffee planter. I've twelve hundred acres at Thika, north of Nairobi. The work's hard, I won't say it isn't, but it's better than starving. Do you want the job or not?"

  "Yes."

  "Come on, then. Train leaves in half an hour." She led the way to the station, turning around once to ask, "What's your name?"

  "Baxter. Sid Baxter."

  The engineer on the Adelaide had asked him the same question. He didn't dare use Malone, and Baxter--the name he'd used at Arden Street with India--had come out of his mouth before he could stop it. He wished he'd said Smith, Martin, anything but Baxter. He'd wanted to forget India, forget what they'd had. Now he was reminded of her every day of his life.

  Maggie had neglected to tell him that she couldn't afford a passenger ticket for him, so he'd had to sit in the baggage compartment on top of the chicken crates. The train's wheels banged and bumped so hard over the unballasted tracks that he was black and blue by the time they'd reached Nairobi. Two young men, tall and ebony-skinned, dressed only in short red tunics, met them with an ox cart.

  Sid goggled at them until Maggie said, "Two of my workers. Kikuyu. Stunning, aren't they?"

  Two days later they arrived at Thika, a handful of huts on a narrow river, tired and footsore. From there it was another ten miles to Maggie's farm. Maggie showed Sid his new home--a wooden shack raised on four posts--then put him to work breaking ground. He'd told her he wanted no wages--not right away--only whisky. She obliged him, giving him a bottle, warning him to make it last.

  At night he drank to forget and by day he worked to forget, driving himself to the point of exhaustion. He worked until his clothes were drenched with sweat and his hands bled. Until he vomited with heat sickness. He worked until the sun went down, and then he kept working until he collapsed on his bed and slept without dreaming.

  After several weeks of this, Maggie came out of her house one night and walked into her fields. There she watched him, hands on her hips, as he attempted to dig out a tree stump by lamplight. She said nothing at first, just looked at him, her eyes traveling over his burned and blistered skin, his emaciated body.

  Then she said, "I've had enough of this. You want to top yourself, do it on someone else's farm, not mine." They'd stood there for a long moment, glowering at each other. And then, in a softer tone, she'd said, "Whatever you've done, or whatever's been done to you, working yourself to death won't undo it. You'll have to live with it. Just like the rest of us."

  He'd thrown down his pickax and stalked off to his hut, angry that Maggie had seen inside him. He found other ways to lose himself after that. Other ways to forget. There were quiet times on the farm, times when he wasn't planting and wasn't harvesting and wasn't needed. He started riding out then, going off on safari by himself. He would wander for days, sometimes weeks, traveling as far north as Mount Kenya, west to the Mau Reserve, as far east as the Tana River.

  He would take a tent with him, a flask and a rifle, shooting only to eat, for he hated watching an animal die; he'd had his fill of pain. He would cross plains and climb hills, seeing places no white man had seen before, watching lions and elephants and rhinos, following the vast black herds of wildebeest.

  He would sleep beneath the stars in good weather, listening to the night noises, half-hoping a lion would take him. During the day he would walk under the endless African sky and talk to India. He would ask her "Why?" and argue with her and accuse her. Sometimes he would rage and shout at her. And once, years after he'd arrived in Africa, he'd taken off his clothing in a storm and lain on the ground, weeping for her, wishing the hard rain would pound the fiesh from his bones and dissolve him into the dirt. But it didn't. And so he'd gotten up, muddy and cold, and made his way back to Maggie's farm. By the time he'd arrived, he was sick.

  "You finished now?" she'd asked, sponging his brow with a cold cloth and making him swallow quinine. He'd nodded. "Good," she said. "Because whoever she is, she's not worth it."

  "But that's the thing of it, Maggs, she is," he'd replied.

  He'd stopped trying to kill himself after that, but he hadn't stopped drinking. He spent almost everything he earned on whisky, wine, or whatever could be bought from the merchant Jevanjee in Nairobi. He drank with Maggie and her planter neighbors, and if they weren't available, he drank alone.

  "Looking forward to the next few weeks," Maggie said now. "It's a lovely time, isn't it, when the coffee blooms? The white flowers look like snow. And then the beans come, like holly berries against the green leaves. Reminds me of England at Christmas."

  "Without the bloody fruitcake," Sid said.

  Maggie laughed. She nodded a
t the newspaper on top of his porch table. She'd put it there earlier in the day. It was one of the London papers, nearly two months out of date, but news traveled slowly to Thika. Its headlines were trumpeting the Liberals' victory in the British general election.

  "Did you read it yet?" she asked.

  "No," Sid said. He had no use for newspapers. They connected him with the world when all he wanted to do was withdraw from it.

  "Well, you should. We've a new government," Maggie said. "And they're transferring the entire African protectorate from the Foreign office to the Colonial office. Lord Elgin's been made secretary of state for the colonies. And rumor has it the governor's asked him to send his undersecretary out for a visit."

  Sid frowned. He preferred the topic of planting, but all the planters loved talking politics. "It's nothing to do with me," he said. "I stay away from politics. And politicians."

  "I try, but they won't stay away from me. If London's thinking of sending a man out here, something's afoot. I guarantee it."

  "That's wishful thinking, Maggs. Even if someone does come, what'll he do? Shoot some lions, get his picture in the papers, then go home again and forget all about Africa."

  "He can't. Not anymore. Someone's going to have to answer a few questions and soon. More settlers are coming all the time--where will they go? And what of the tribes? The Masai aren't happy about being pushed onto reserves. The Kikuyu aren't either. And the Nandi are furious. They fought a bloody battle against us. They'll do it again. The Land office is over-whelmed. So are the district commissioners. It's going to turn ugly, Sid. You wait and see."

  "What will you do if it does?"

  Maggie heaved a long, trailing sigh. "Stay," she said. "I've no choice, have I? My husband brought me here, then died and left me with a farm, four hundred coffee plants, and no bloody money. Twenty years on, and I'm only just starting to show a profit. How about you? What will you do?"

  Sid thought of his small, comfortable hut, of his friendship with Maggie, of the rugged, beautiful, indifferent country he'd come to think of as home. He thought of the fragile peace he'd found here. It was all he had.

  "As long as you stay, I'll stay," he said.

  "You could apply for a land grant yourself."

  Sid shook his head. He knew that if he applied for land, he'd get it--six hundred acres in Kenya Province would be leased to him by the British Foreign office for ninety-nine years at the rate of a halfpenny per acre per year. Some would leap at the chance. He wanted no part of it. He was finished with thieving.

  "The British government takes land in Kenya from one set of people and hands it out to another," he said. "Do that back home and it's called robbery. Do it here, and it's called progress."

  "Aye, well, call it whatever you like, lad," Maggie said wearily, "but see that we get a good harvest this year. Otherwise you and I and the cook and the toto and all the field hands are going to starve."

  Maggie talked on, telling him to make sure to get a fence around the north field, reminding him what the gazelles did to the bushes last year. He said he didn't need reminding, thank you, the fence was almost entirely up. He poured another round and they talked on about the milk cow's recent bout of mastitis, the new litter of goats, and a cobra that had been spotted near the henhouse. As dusk came down they could both see the lights of the neighboring Thompson plantation winking in the distance.

  "When are you planning to go to Nairobi again?" Maggie asked.

  "In a fortnight," Sid said. "Grain's running low. We need more paraffin and a new bit for the horse, and Alice gave me a list of kitchen supplies as long as my arm."

  "While you're there," Maggie said, still gazing at the Thompson farm, "why don't you bring back something nice for that lovely Lucy Thompson? I hear she's set her cap for you."

  Sid snorted. "She must be a damned desperate woman."

  "Oh, rubbish. She's a pretty girl, you know. And the Thompsons have two thousand acres."

  Sid sighed. Maggie had tried to matchmake for him before. He decided to nip this particular round in the bud. "It's just not to be, Maggs," he said, affecting a heartbroken look. "There's only one woman for me, but she's broken my heart. She won't have me."

  Maggie sat up, her eyes bright with curiosity. "She has? Really?" she said. "Who is she?"

  "You, luv. Will you marry me?"

  "Oh, you sod, you!" she scolded, but a smile creased her weathered face.

  "Come on, Maggs, let's make a go of it. You and me. What do you say?"

  "I say, �No, thank you.' One man was plenty. I'm through with you lot. I like a quiet life, a book at night, a bed to myself."

  "I do, too. Try to remember that the next time you start meddling."

  Maggie narrowed her eyes. "I wonder sometimes about the woman who made you a bachelor," she said. "It's not a natural state for a man. You're all helpless as kittens without a woman. Every last one of you. If a man's a bachelor, there has to be a reason. One day, Sid, I'm going to find out what it is."

  And with that Maggie rose heavily from her chair and bade him good night. Sid watched her go, smiling, knowing that was one thing she would never find out. She liked to play at prying, but she never pushed it too far. He didn't like talking about his past. She didn't like talking about hers, either. Each understood this about the other. It was one of the reasons they got on so well. Maggie knew that he had come from London and had no wife, no children. Sid knew that Maggie and her husband had left Devon for Australia, then left Australia for Africa. Nothing else.

  He lived his life now with many unknowables. He didn't know if the seedlings he planted would take, or what kind of yield he would get from them if they did. He didn't know if gazelles or monkeys or blight would destroy the crops, if the sun would wither them, if rain would rot them. He didn't know if the Kikuyu would continue to accept the settlers' encroachment. Or if they would rise up, burn them out, or murder them in their beds. He didn't know if he loved Africa or hated it. If he would die here or leave next year. He didn't know how he got out of bed some mornings with no one to live for, no one to love. He didn't know how he managed to stay alive without any dreams.

  There were days in Africa, so many days, when Sid Baxter felt he didn't know a thing about the land, the people, the coffee, or himself--but he did know one thing, one, hard, immutable fact: he knew that India Selwyn Jones was gone from his life, and that he would never see her again. Of that much, at least, he was certain.

  Chapter 82

  "It's a blasted money sink," Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the prime minister, said. He was seated behind his desk in his office at number 10 Downing Street.

  "On the contrary, it's begun to turn a profit," protested Lord Elgin, the secretary of state for the colonies.

  "How much of a profit?"

  "We anticipate at least forty thousand pounds for the year."

  "Forty thousand? Forty thousand? That damned railway cost more than five million! We need to do better than forty thousand. I'm being taken to task for the expenditure in the Commons every single week. That bloody Joe Bristow is hammering away at me, demanding to know why five million have gone to finance a railway in Africa while children here in Britain go hungry. What kind of answer can I give him? He's got me by the throat. Look there"--he gestured to the pile of newspapers on his desk. "His name's on every front page today. In twenty-point type!"

  "Well, you can blame yourself for that, Henry," Elgin said. "You made him a minister. He's your creature."

  "He's his own damned creature, unfortunately," the prime minister shot back. "And he's not the problem. Not the main one, at least. It's the railway. I need you to tell me exactly how we are to make it come good."

  "It's very simple," Elgin said. "The railway's fortunes wait upon the settlers' fortunes. Settlers mean crops. Crops mean exports. Exports mean cash--both for those who grow them and for that which transports them. Give me more settlers and I will give you a return, not of forty thousand, but four hundred thousand."

/>   "You need settlers? Go and find some! What's stopping you?" Campbell-Bannerman asked.

  Elgin turned to Freddie Lytton, his newly appointed undersecretary. This was a golden opportunity for Freddie. He knew it and seized it.

  "It's not that easy, sir," Freddie said, sitting forward in his chair. "It's a daunting task to pack up and move halfway round the world. Certain guarantees need to be made before a man will stake his fortune in Africa. Unfortunately they are not being made, and Britons know it. Stories are trickling back home about the difficulty of securing land. Grants are being made, but not all of them are legitmate. And even when they are, the paperwork is taking years to clear the Land office. Construction on roads and bridges is proceeding at a snail's pace. And there is constant squabbling among the different layers of authority. The governor is angry with the Colonial office. The district commissioners complain about the provincial commissioners. And the settlers are angry with everyone."