The Winter Rose

by Jennifer Donnelly

  "She is no mere child, India. She is my child, is she not? Isn't that what you wanted her to be? She is the undersecretary for the colonies' child. She will be expected to attend official functions in Africa and make conversation with adults. She must impress them and she must not embarrass me. See to it."

  And with that, he left. India watched him walk away. This was the game they played--she and Freddie. He was warning her. Reminding her that she was not to put a foot wrong in Africa. Nor was Charlotte. Neither was to do anything that might reflect badly on him, that might slow his climb to Number 10. Otherwise there would be repercussions. Small cruelties. And large ones.

  India knew Charlotte would be upset, so she quickly returned to her. "That will be all for now, Mrs. Pavlic," she said. The dressmaker quickly gathered her things and left.

  "Lady Lytton," Miss Gibson said. "She is trying hard. Very hard."

  "But are you, Miss Gibson?" India snapped. "Make it a game. Make rhymes. Make acronyms from the words. Do something. Find a way. I will not have a repeat of what just happened. Do you understand me?"

  Miss Gibson nodded and India dismissed her. She was harsh, but she couldn't help it. She spent so much of her time trying to make sure Freddie had no cause to reproach Charlotte. It was a life lived on tenterhooks, and it took its toll.

  As soon as Miss Gibson was gone, Charlotte threw herself onto her bed. "I hate him, Mummy. I hate him," she sobbed.

  "Shh, Charlotte," India said, sitting down next to her. "He's your father. You mustn't say such things."

  "I shall run away once we're in Africa. See if I don't!"

  India stroked her daughter's back. "Oh, I hope not. I couldn't bear it if you did. I would be so sad. What would I do without you?"

  Charlotte turned over. "You could come with me, Mummy," she said, sniffling. "British East Africa is very large. I know it is. Father made me memorize the area in square miles. They'd never find us."

  India wiped the tears from her daughter's cheeks. Each drop that fell felt like acid eating away at her heart. "Where do you think we should go, my love?" she asked Charlotte, lying down with her.

  "Well, we could go to the Sahara, but we'd need camels. We could go into the jungle like Mowgli and Bagheera. Or we could go to the sea. We could sneak off when the boat docks in Africa. It'll be ever so busy, Mummy. No one would see us go. Miss Gibson's been to Mombasa. She says it's very hectic. She says the ocean is blue like turquoise. And that there are parrots and monkeys and the most beautiful flowers you've ever seen."

  "And what would we do at sea, the two of us? Tell me a story about us."

  "We'd be pirates!" Charlotte said. "We'd wear red skirts and eye patches and pink flowers behind our ears."

  "Eye patches and flowers?" India exclaimed. "Wouldn't we make a sight?"

  "Yes! And we'd wear lots and lots of jewels, too. Great big ruby rings and diamond necklaces that we'd stolen. And we'd have a treasure chest full of gold coins."

  "Where would we keep it all?"

  "In a huge yellow boat. We'll sail it on the turquoise sea. And it will be so warm and bright on the water and so much nicer than it is here. I love the sea, Mummy, don't you? I should like to live by the sea forever and ever."

  Sid had loved the sea, India remembered. He had wanted to live by it, too. Just as his daughter did. To wake up in a house on the coast. With the sun streaming in the windows. He almost had. At Point Reyes. India had never sold that land. She never would. It was their land. Oh, if only Charlotte could have known him. Her real father.

  "Is my story making you sad, Mummy?" Charlotte suddenly asked, her small face worried.

  "Oh, no, darling. Not at all," India said.

  "But you looked sad."

  "I was thinking, that's all. I was wondering if a yellow boat would be best or if we might prefer a purple one."

  "What about yellow and purple? A stripy boat!" Charlotte said, smiling. "One with a sunburst on its sails. That would be much nicer than an old skull and crossbones."

  India smiled, too, glad to see her daughter happy again. She wondered, as she'd done a million times, if she had done the right thing by her. She had sought to protect Charlotte from the ugliness of a harsh world by marrying Freddie. But had she? Sometimes she did not know. Sometimes she thought there was nothing uglier in all the world than her own husband.

  "And then we'll run away to a secret island. Far, far away."

  I should have run away with you. Long ago. Before you were born, India thought. What have I done to you? Sometimes she thought that living in the meanest slum, just the two of them, without Freddie, would have been better than living here in Berkeley Square with him.

  But she also knew that slum children grew sickly, when they grew at all. Slum children were hungry and dirty and worked in factories. Charlotte had her own hardships--namely Freddie--but she would never suffer hunger or poverty. And what her life was now, in Freddie's house, was not what it would always be. One day she would be grown, and would come into money set aside for her by her grandfather. She could leave Berkeley Square, and Freddie, and make her own life, a happy life, with all the advantages money and pedigree and a proper upbringing could afford.

  "We'll do that one day, won't we, Mummy? We'll run away to the sea and live there. You and me. In our boat. Or maybe a pretty house on the seashore all decorated with shells. We'll have a lovely life then, won't we?"

  India knew that she herself would never have a lovely life. Never. But Charlotte would. She would see to it. She had given up so much to make sure of that. She would give up more. Everything she had, in fact, to ensure her daughter's future happiness.

  "Yes, my darling, we will be pirates in a cottage by the sea."

  It was a lie, but she had told the child worse. That Freddie was her father. And that he cared for her.

  Charlotte snuggled against her mother. "I'm glad we will. Even if it's only a story."

  "A very lovely story," India said.

  Charlotte lifted her head and looked at her. "Lovely stories come true sometimes, don't they, Mummy?"

  India smiled at her and nodded and let her think so. It was easier that way. And kinder. So much kinder than telling her the truth.

  Chapter 87

  Nairobi was a swamp.

  The rains had turned its red dirt streets to mud so thick and deep that it mired wagon wheels, held oxen fast, and sucked men's boots off their feet. Sid had made the two-day trek from Thika to buy supplies for Maggie. He'd had to leave his wagon at the train depot and walk into town.

  He'd been to the blacksmith's to have yokes and tools mended, to the Indian bazaar for salt and spices, the gunsmith's for bullets, and the Norfolk Stores for iodoform, quinine, and whisky. He'd also bought paraffin, candles, four fifty-pound bags of flour, newspapers, bootlaces, soap, and Worcestershire sauce. His final stop had been Elliot's bakery, where he'd bought a fruitcake. Maggie was partial to them.

  After he'd tied down all his purchases in the back of the wagon and covered them with a tarpaulin, he headed back into town for his very last stop--the Norfolk Hotel for a drink or two. As he walked, finally free of Maggie's endless shopping list, he allowed himself to look the place over. Nairobi was not a lovely place, but that's why he loved it. It put on no airs, made no pretenses. It took people as it found them and expected the courtesy to be returned.

  The town owed its existence to the bosses of the Uganda railway, which ran between Mombasa and Lake Victoria. They'd been laying tracks for three years, east to west, and when they reached mile 327, a flat patch of river-fed land the Masai called Engore Nyarobe--the Place of Cold Water--they decided it would be a good location to quarter workers and ready supplies for the arduous push into the highlands.

  As Sid squelched his way through the muddy streets, he saw several bush families who'd come to town for provisions. He could always tell them apart from town families for they walked single file, even in Nairobi's wide streets, as if they were still on a narrow bush path and d
etermined to avoid thorns and ticks. He counted ten new buildings going up on his way to the Norfolk, and saw dozens of carpenters and painters freshening up the fa�es of the older ones on Station Road and Victoria Street.

  Nairobi might have begun as a railway camp, but it had become a boom town. Shabby wooden dukas now rubbed elbows with smart new hotels and wide-windowed shops where women bought kid shoes and lawn dresses. The Norfolk had imported a French chef to cook for its guests, and afternoon tea could be had on Duke Street. Balls were given at the governor's house, and race days at the newly built track were festive social occasions. A handful of government buildings constructed from stone lent a note of gravitas to Nairobi and telegraph poles gave it an air of modernity, but one look up and down its streets told even the most casual observer that it was still very much a frontier town. Victoria Street had its brothels, wash houses, and opium dens, and the town was largely populated by speculators, ne'er-do-wells, and eccentrics.

  Sid greeted a handful of them as he stepped onto the Norfolk's veranda. Ali Kahn, the town's transport baron, was unloading passengers and trunks from his wagon. They'd shared the ride up from the depot with chickens, goats, and a piano. The Goanese doctor, Rosendo Ribeiro, was sitting in a rattan chair, enjoying a glass of lemon squash. Sid guessed he'd be here, for he'd seen his zebra--the one he rode to see patients--hitched to a post. When he reached the foyer, Sid heard Lord Delamere, a wild and fearless English baron with twenty thousand Kenyan acres, holding forth in the bar. Pioneer Mary, a peddler who strode through the bush like she owned it, a rhino-hide whip at her hip, was in there, too. She could drink Delamere under the table, and often ended her binges by riding off on her mule backward.

  "That you, Bax?" Delamere called as Sid walked toward the bar.

  Sid tipped his hat. "I'm afraid so," he said.

  Jo Roos, Maggie's planter neighbor, was at Delamere's table, along with the Cole brothers, who were also big landowners, and a few other men. Sid had lived in the bush for five years, spending every single day with the Kikuyu, and he now saw his own people much as they did--as either decent whites or sods. Some at Del's table were one or the other. Some were both, depending on the time of day and how much they'd had to drink.

  "We've got your neighbor here," Delamere said. "We're holding him for ransom."

  Sid looked at Roos, who was nursing a whisky. Jo, a Boer settler who'd come north from Pretoria, was a miserable bastard, always complaining.

  "You can keep him," Sid said. "I'm not paying."

  Roos scowled, the others laughed.

  "Sit down with us, Bax. Have a drink," Delamere said.

  Sid sat, feeling a bit out of place, for he knew that Del and the others thought him an odd duck. They didn't understand why he didn't apply for a land grant. They didn't understand why he refused to guide wealthy sports to big game when he could have made a fortune doing so. And most of all, they couldn't understand how he got on so well with the Kikuyu. It was known that he genuinely liked them and that they liked him, too. The men at the Norfolk didn't understand these things, but they welcomed Sid anyway, knowing that one couldn't be too particular about one's company in Nairobi, or one would not have any.

  Bottles of whisky and gin were brought and downed as the group talked politics and planting and traded scraps of news and hearsay.

  "Hear about the DC for Turkhana?" Roos asked.

  Turkhana was a remote posting. Sid knew that its district commissioner was up there by himself.

  "Went mad with loneliness. Hanged himself."

  "You would know that, Jo," Sid said. "How'd you find out?"

  "DC for Baringo told me. He was here yesterday. He's the one who found him. Said he'd hang himself, too, if only he could find a tree tall enough to get the job done."

  Delamere changed the subject. Isolation and its hard consequences cut a bit too close to the bone for every man at the table. "How's Maggie? How's the farm?" he asked Sid. "Still planting coffee?"

  Sid nodded. "We've seven hundred acres under coffee right now," he said. "About to plant two hundred more. And she's thinking of trying some sisal, too. Fifty acres or so. Just to see what it'll do."

  "It's good land for coffee, Thika," Delamere said. "High, but not too high."

  "You can have the best land in the world. It's not worth a damn unless you find men to work it," Roos said morosely. "The Kikuyu won't work for me. I can't get one bloody man to work in my fields. I offer them money, good money, but they don't take it. Why is that, Bax?"

  "Ever see lions on the plains, Jo?"

  "Yes."

  "Ever watch the sunset at Thika?"

  "You insane, man? Of course I have. I live there, don't I?"

  "That's why."

  "Eh?"

  "That's why the Africans won't take our money. What would they do with it? Buy tea sets and jam pots and pictures of the king? Why would they want that rubbish? They have Africa."

  Jo looked at him with an uncomprehending scowl.

  "I'm afraid your poetry's lost on him, old chap," Delamere said.

  "You get your coffee harvested, Bax," Jo said stubbornly. "How? How do you do it?"

  Sid shook his head. If Jo would only take ten minutes to get to know the tribal people, he'd have his answer. "Deal with the women, not the men," he said.

  Jo nodded. "Because the lazy buggers won't work--"

  "Because the men won't farm," Sid said. "In their villages, farming is women's work. It'd be like you and me hanging out the wash or knitting booties. It's not done. Deal with the women. They're the ones with the business sense."

  "They take Maggie's money?"

  "No, but they take goats, blankets, and lanterns. Quinine, salve, cloth. And toys for their children. Women'll do anything for their kiddies. That's how they are."

  Sid knew that to be true. He'd seen it in the Kikuyu mothers just as he'd seen it in the Whitechapel mothers. In a small, bustling medical clinic set up in the yard of a caff on Brick Lane. He quickly pushed the memory down as he did with all of his memories of India. Then he looked at the clock. It was nearly four p.m. He'd spent two hours drinking and gassing. It was time to make a start. He wanted to be well north of Nairobi by dark.

  "Well, gentlemen, it's been a pleasure," he said, "but I've a bit of a walk ahead of me."

  "Oh! One thing before you go," Delamere said, "I meant to tell you. I had dinner with the DC for Kenya Province last week and he told me he's looking for a guide."

  "For hunters?" Sid asked.

  "No, for a surveyor. Last chap who went out was eaten by a python as he crossed the Chinga. Damned snake got his satchel. Swallowed every map he'd made. The new man says he won't take one step out of Nairobi without a guide. No one knows Kenya better than you, Bax, and the pay's good. You should consider it. Give you something to do between planting and harvesting."

  "I will. Thanks," Sid said.

  As he rose to leave, a pair of painters bustled through the taproom carrying a ladder. Sid recalled all the renovation he'd seen on his walk through town. "What's going on round here?" he asked.

  "Don't you know?" Del asked.

  "Wouldn't be asking if I did."

  "We've a visitor coming from home. The undersecretary for the colonies."

  Sid remembered Maggie saying something about that. "Elgin, is it?" he asked.

  "No, that's the secretary himself. It's ...um... oh, blast, what is his name?" Delamere grabbed a newspaper off an empty chair. "It's in here somewhere," he said, scanning the front page. "It'll be quite the social event."

  "It'll be balls and banquets and a lot of bloody promises made, that's what it'll be," Roos said glumly.

  "You forgot hunting," Del said. "The bloke'll certainly want to bag a lion. They all do. Ah! Here it is. Lytton."

  Sid had been digging in his trouser pocket for a few coins for the barmaid. He stopped and looked at Delamere. "What did you say?" he asked quietly.

  "Lytton. Freddie Lytton. Says here that he's bringing a whole
battalion of underlings with him. His daughter, too. And his wife, Lady India Lytton. I knew her parents, God rest them, Lord Burnleigh was richer than Midas and a damned good--" Delamere suddenly stopped speaking. He frowned with concern. "I say, Bax, old boy, are you all right? You've gone white as a bloody ghost!"

  Chapter 88

  "Oh, just look at it, Seamie! Did you ever dream Africa would be like this? All turquoise and red and purple?"

  "No, I didn't. I thought it would be sort of brown," Seamie said. "With zebras."

  Seamie and Willa stood on deck of the SS Goorka, staring like two wide-eyed children at the aspect of Mombasa. Foaming breakers thundered toward its white seawalls, rising sheer and majestic out of the shimmering Indian Ocean. Massive baobab trees ringed the harbor, their trunks thick and stolid-looking next to the airy palms and lush green mango trees. Vivid bougainvillea tumbled down walls and spilled over cliffs. Beyond a tall lighthouse, the heavy battlements of a fort rose into a brilliant blue sky.