‘No,’ he agreed. ‘You have to change to please me!’
There didn’t seem to be any answer to that. Hero hurried into the house as fast as she could go, half scared that he might change his mind and leave her behind. She pulled open her wardrobe and stared at her few dresses, wondering which of them would meet most closely Benedict’s requirements. She chose one that was a bright pink, covered with white broderie anglaise, that her mother had made for her when she had graduated from college. If she sat on a dust-sheet, she thought, she could keep it reasonably clean between there and Isiolo, and even if she couldn’t, it was the only dress she had that she would have described as soft and pretty. It had a wide-brimmed hat to go with it too, and pink cotton gloves, and pink high-heeled shoes as well.
She did have a bath. Koinange stoked up the fire, a broad grin on his face, and Hero allowed the water to trickle into the bottom of the bath, scrubbing herself with an energy that left her breathless. It was a glorious sensation to feel thoroughly clean from head to foot, but she couldn’t help hoping that Benedict was right about the approaching rain-clouds as she ruefully cleaned the bath after the last of the rust-red water had disappeared down the plug. Until one had experienced the tragic results of drought, one didn’t know what a luxury it was to be clean and not looking twice at every cup of water one put to one’s lips.
With a self-consciousness that made her feel more than a little foolish, Hero emerged from her room in her pink and white dress and went to join the others on the verandah. ‘I’m - I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,’ she said.
She didn’t know how Benedict looked at her, because she couldn’t bring herself to look at him at all. She made an effort to pull herself together and looked round for the others, but they had already gone.
‘It’s a long way to Nanyuki,’ Benedict explained. ‘I
told them I’d pass on their good-byes to you.’
‘Thank you,’ Hero murmured. She fingered the skirt of her dress through her pink gloves. ‘This is the prettiest dress I have,’ she told him, ‘but it isn’t at all practical. Is it the sort of thing you wanted?’
‘It’s exactly what I wanted!’ he said. ‘Shall we go?’
He had changed his clothes as well. He was wearing off-white trousers that smelt of carbolic soap and sun, and a coat of the same material, under which was a sparkling dead-white shirt, and a striped tie.
A movement caught Hero’s eye at the other end of the verandah and she turned quickly to see Koinange running away from the house and jumping on to a waiting lorry that was already full of laughing, excited, noisy Africans, whom she recognized as the workers on the farm. ‘Where on earth are they going?’ Her eye kindled as she felt the full weight of her responsibility for seeing that the last of the fields were sown with the experimental seed before the rains came - if they came. ‘They can’t go anywhere now!’
Benedict led her firmly out to the Land-Rover. ‘You’ll have to blame me. I gave them all the day off.’
‘You must be mad! We haven’t finished — ‘
‘They’ll finish it tomorrow.’ He gave her a little shake. ‘Besides, my girl, I’ll have you know that I am in charge of the work on the farm.’
‘But—’ she began.
‘But nothing! I’ve given you a lot of rope, Hero Carmichael, but now you’ve come to the end of it. My patience is exhausted. You have no more time left—’ He was silent for a moment. Then, ‘You don’t understand, do you? Never mind, mwanamke, you will!’ ‘Don’t call me that!’
He gave her a long, cool look. ‘If you don’t like it, you know you can change it any time you care to. I’m not stopping you!’
‘I can’t! Benedict, I want to go to England soon. I can’t go on staying at the farm with you. I should have gone back to Nairobi with the others and then you couldn’t call me your concubine or anything else.’ ‘You’d still be my wife.’
She threw him a mutinous look. ‘Your mwanamke! I won’t be called that by anyone!’
‘All right,’ he said, ‘if you don’t like it, after today no one will ever call you that again!’
‘I don’t like it!’
He plainly thought that funny. ‘I haven’t forgotten that I’ve promised to take you to England either. We’ll go, just as soon as I can get away with a clear conscience. Will that do?’
She nodded, not daring to speak.
The Land-Rover was a lot cleaner than when she had last seen it. Koinange must have brushed out the front and washed down the seats, and somebody had covered the canvas with American cloth, cheap and unbleached, to protect their clothes from the dust. Hero sat as far away from Benedict as she could get, pulling the cloth up all round her, and staring out at the passing scenery as though she had never seen it before.
It was she who saw the giraffe on the road ahead of them, bending across to a nearby tree to look for the few leaves that were left on the disintegrating timbers. It was a proud, awkward-looking beast, and it had no
intention of moving aside for anyone.
‘We could practically drive through its legs!’ Hero giggled-
He hushed her with a movement of his hand. ‘She has a baby over there,’ he whispered.
‘But it’s tiny! They’ll starve, won’t they?’ she said.
He touched her gloved hand with his own. ‘They may be lucky. It will rain tonight at least. It’s not much, but it may keep them going.’
Hero heaved a sigh. ‘This year! What about next?’
‘They’re not the only ones to suffer,’ he reminded her. ‘We know it’s bound to get worse all along the Sahelian belt - and not only in Africa, but in the Indian sub-continent too. If we allow thousands of people and animals to die, it will be a man-made disaster. It doesn’t have to happen.’
‘But it will, won’t it?’ she said.
‘Probably.’
‘Can’t you stop it?’
‘No, I cannot, but that won’t stop me trying! Will that do you?’
Hero watched the giraffes go with a sense of loss. ‘Is it true that the only wild animals in England are all in zoos?’ she asked him.
‘Not exactly,’ he answered. ‘But it isn’t like it is out here. There aren’t any giraffes walking across the open road, for instance!’
She laughed. ‘Stupid!’ she murmured. ‘You know quite well what I meant!’
He gave her a more serious look. ‘It takes a little getting used to, living in England. I can’t promise you’d like it at first. There isn’t the freedom you have here, there isn’t the room for it. I can’t promise your mountains and grandeur,’ he cautioned her. ‘England is full of small green fields, and pretty little rounded hills, also green, but it has the charm of her people. A temperate climate makes for a tolerant nation.’
‘Where are we going in Isiolo?’ she asked him.
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I wondered when you’d ask me that! We’re going to church, as we should have done before. They’re expecting us. I called up the good fathers on the radio telephone and told them we’d be with them about lunchtime. They thought it was about time too! I explained to them that you hadn’t wanted a religious ceremony in Nairobi because we’d only just met, and you weren’t at all sure of yourself as far as marriage to me was concerned. They thought you were quite right about that—’
‘They did?’
‘Well, they did rather wonder what your mother would have thought of it all, but I pointed out that the bonds of matrimony took a bit of getting used to when you’re marrying a complete stranger and that to make them unbreakable at the same time would have put an
intolerable strain on you.’
‘And on you?’
‘It was different for me,’ he said. ‘You see, I knew exactly what I was doing from the first moment I saw
you.’
Benedict might have thought that he had explained their civil wedding to the priests, but it didn’t stop Hero from feeling that it was unlikely that they would have accepted his expl
anation. But there she was
wrong.
‘Ah, Hero me dear,’ she was greeted in strong, Australian accents. ‘I was beginning to think I’d have to come out to the farm to take a look at you and that husband of yours. Like to have everything dinkum, as you know. But Benedict explained that it was nothing more than an engagement so far, but as you were together out there you thought it more proper to have some kind of ceremony first. Quite right, me dear! Your mother would have approved! And now we can have the real thing and you can both live happily ever after. Come along now. I take it you want me to say Mass, so I’ll just get vested while you say a little prayer in the church.’
Hero, who had opened her mouth to speak once or twice during this speech, decided that silence would serve her better, and followed the priest meekly through the open door and up the aisle.
The Mass was in English, which caused some embarrassment when the priest could only find the words of the marriage service in Swahili. However, after some flustered searching through some typewritten bits of paper he had on the lectern, accompanied by some very Australian comments under his breath, he translated the words himself and managed to make them sound more personal than Hero had ever heard them.
She found she couldn’t look at Benedict once during the service. It was as much as she could do to hold her hand steady when he took it in his, removed her wedding ring and put it back again. Did he know that now it could never be removed again? He certainly put it on her finger as if he meant it to stay there. But to have arranged it all without saying a single, solitary word to her about it. He must have been very sure of her for that!
Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder. He had done it now, she thought. The bonds would be there for as long as they both lived and nothing could break them. She looked up at him and then saw the wide smile on his face.
‘Didn’t I promise you that no one would call you my mwanamke ever again?’ he whispered to her, as the priest disappeared into the sacristy to divest.
She wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes. ‘Oh, Benedict, I don’t care what they call me! I want to be the sort of wife you want, no more than that!’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘You were asleep before, but now you’re waking up, and you don’t know where you are. But I meant to have you all along, with your dark Greek eyes and your loving heart, as I tried to tell you that very first day.’
She could only stare at him. ‘But you said she was rather a darling!’ she said when she could say anything at all.
‘And so she is!’ he said, kissing her hard on the mouth.
CHAPTER TWELVE HERO blinked as they left the cool sanctuary of the church for the brilliant sunshine outside. It was a second or two before she could focus on the grinning faces of the farm workers led by Koinange, beside himself with excitement. Too late, she saw the handful of grass seed in his hand and received it full in the face.
‘Oh no!’ she gasped. ‘Not after my beautiful bath!’
Benedict laughed. ‘They haven’t any confetti to throw, and no doubt they have high hopes for the fields as well as for you!’
Hero was rooted to the spot. ‘You mean - your son?’ she breathed.
‘Our son,’ he corrected her with a smile. He touched her scarlet cheek with his forefinger, looking amused. ‘Ah, I see I have your whole interest now!’
Yes,’ she admitted. ‘But I refuse to discuss it in the middle of the street. In fact I refuse to discuss it at all!’
‘Very proper,’ he conceded. ‘There is, after all, nothing to discuss, is there? Like you, I have old-fashioned ideas about these things —’
Perversely, Hero could now think of half a dozen things they had to discuss. He had been high-handed enough for one day, arranging everything behind her back. It was just like that first meal they had had together, with him ordering for her as though she had no ideas on the subject herself.
‘So have I!’ she announced. ‘I like people to say please and thank you, and - and all the common niceties.’ She brushed the last of the grass seed out of her collar.
‘If you look over there,’ he said mildly, ‘you’ll see the rain coming.’
She whirled round, and discovered for herself that Mount Kenya had disappeared behind a wall of cloud that was moving rapidly across the foothills towards them.
‘And will it come here?’
‘Today anything may happen,’ he answered, giving her a studied look which brought the colour to her
cheeks. ‘It’s that sort of day!’
The Africans, too, fell silent, watching the clouds coming spinning towards them. In the distance a drum could be heard, and then another, and then a third, all of them beating out the same message, that the rains were coming, that this year they had not failed.
‘We ought to go home before the road becomes a quagmire,’ she murmured. ‘We haven’t any chains. Benedict, are you listening? Please let’s go!’
‘Don’t you want to stay for lunch?’ She shook her head urgently. ‘We’ll be stuck here for goodness knows how long if we do. You don’t understand ! The water fills up the river bed in no time at all. It comes rushing down, taking everything with it, and there may not be a road to go on by this evening.’
‘It had better not take my topsoil!’
Hero shrugged. ‘We’ve done what we can to prevent it, but it builds up a tremendous force. Darling, would it be so terrible if we had to start all over again?’
‘You get in the Land-Rover,’ he suggested, not answering her questions, ‘and I’ll say good-bye to the good fathers. We’ll ask them out for a meal some other time. Right?’
She nodded. ‘Thank them from me too, won’t you?’ she called after him.
The Africans were looking anxiously towards the approaching rain too. They began to shout to one-another, holding out their hands to feel the first of the heavy drops of rain that might fall.
‘We too shall be going back to the farm, memsahib/ they shouted to Hero. ‘This time the rain is coming for sure!’
They threw themselves into the back of the lorry, holding some old, tatty sacks over their heads and, as the lorry pulled out in a cloud of dust, they began to sing, the sweet cadences of their song rising and falling above the roar of the engine. One straggler was grasped by his two hands and his torn shirt and pulled up into the already overcrowded well of the lorry amidst a great gust of laughter.
It could have been a stranger who swung himself into the driving seat beside her. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘Take off your hat and say that again,’ he commanded. ‘I want to see your eyes when you say it.’
Her hands were trembling so much that she could hardly manage the pin that had been holding the offending hat in position. ‘Nothing,’ she repeated.
‘I thought so!’ He took her hand in his, threading his
fingers through hers. ‘Can you wait to be reassured until we get back to the farm, or shall we let the rain go hang and —’
‘We can’t!’ She pulled hard on her hand, but he paid no attention at all. ‘We’d never get home at all!’
‘And you want to go home?’
She nodded her head. ‘The new bank might give way. Anything might happen! And we - we might be able to stop it happening if we’re there.’
His eyebrows rose. ‘I shall love to see you throwing yourself into the breach, of course, but that’s not why I want to take you home.’
She pulled again on her hand with as little success as before. ‘I think the rain is circling round us!’
His grasp on her fingers tightened. ‘Don’t try and change the subject,’ he said. ‘Don’t you want to hear about why I want you all to myself for a while?’ He glanced across at her, but it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. ‘Why did you fly up with me, Hero, rather than come up on the train?’
She gave him a sudden, mischievous look. ‘Fishing does seem to be a common interest of both of us,
’ she said, ‘and it looks as though the season’s just beginning,’ she added, as the first drops of rain began to fall on the roof of the Land-Rover, a sound to stir the blood of anyone who spends the greater part of every year waiting for the brief wet season that could make or break the efforts of a lifetime.
The mother giraffe, feeling as skittish as her young one in the rain, began to run as soon as the Land-Rover came in sight. Despite the apparently awkward motion
and the stately swaying of her neck, she kept pace with them for more than a quarter of a mile, before turning away from the road and disappearing into the bush away from their sight.
‘Wasn’t that marvellous!’ said Hero.
‘Does it make up for not having a honeymoon?’ Benedict asked. ‘We’ll have one soon enough, and I’ll take you to England as I promised, but it won’t be yet!’
It didn’t matter at all! Hero sat back in her seat and smiled to herself. It certainly wouldn’t be this year that they went to England. Next year? Well, maybe. She would prefer to have their son in England, she thought, so that there was absolutely no doubt as to his nationality.
‘Don’t you believe me?’ he demanded.
‘Oh, yes, of course!’ she said at once. ‘I was just thinking that I think I’d rather go to Scotland after all.’
‘Are you trying to butter me up?’
Her mouth quivered into a smile. ‘I’ve never seen the Gorbals,’ she said.
‘If we didn’t have to get home —’
‘But we do!’ she insisted. ‘We can’t stop now!’
‘Can’t we just?’
‘No, I promise you! I’m in no mood to ruin my best dress trying to shove the Land-Rover out of a ditch, and I can feel the wheels slipping every now and again now!’
He grinned. ‘Just you wait, my love, until I can deal with you as you deserve! Flirting with your husband,
of all things! Whatever next?’
‘It was not!’
‘It’s what it looked like from where I’m sitting!’
It seemed to her that the air itself was charged with a delicious, spicy excitement such as she had never known before. It was the rain, of course, and the relief of having got rid of Betsy and, more than anything, the wonderful knowledge that she was Benedict’s wife.
The Bonds of Matrimony Page 14
