The pirate gave a laugh as the door closed behind him, and I left, adjusting my fur and frowning at the blood on my shoes. So much for decorum and respectability. All I had done was step off a train and got my knuckles rapped for it while the great white hunter knocked a man’s teeth out and was clapped on the shoulder. Men!
* * *
I found Dodo waiting at the Norfolk. She had already checked in and unpacked what we needed for the evening. She clucked and fretted over my ruined shoes while I tidied myself up and told her what Mr. Fraser had had to say on the subject of my arrival in Kenya.
“That’s the price of leading a notorious life,” she said, primming her lips as she sponged at my shoes.
I blew out a smoke ring and lay back in the bath. “I prefer to think of it as energetic. What do you fancy, Dodo? Shall we wear something inappropriate and scandalise the rustics tonight?”
“We shall not. I have already ordered dinner to be served here in our rooms, and our transportation will apparently be here immediately after breakfast, which is also to be served in private.”
I pulled a face at her. “I’m not a leper, you know. Notoriety isn’t contagious.”
She didn’t reply, and why would she? We both knew it wasn’t true. Notoriety was indeed contagious. If you were a carrier, decent people didn’t care to spend time with you lest they come down with it. Infamy was an infection most folks could do without, even if the price for it was living a very small and colourless life. They were beige people in a beige world, and Dora was one of them.
But she had been a swell sport about being dragged off to the wilds of Africa. I could give her an evening of good behavior.
I rose from the tub and dried myself off, dusting thoroughly with rice powder scented with mimosa. I pulled on my favourite Japanese kimono—raw peacock silk embroidered in silver—and slid my feet into satin mules. I unpacked the phonograph and opened a bottle of gin.
“We can have a party, just the two of us,” I told Dora, and by the time dinner was served, she was wearing the window curtain as a Roman toga and an open handbag on her head in place of a crown. She was cataloguing dolefully the men she had loved and never kissed, and didn’t even stop when the waiters began piling dishes on the table. They served up a lovely dinner and I tipped them lavishly as Dora started in on Quentin.
“He has the handsomest mustache. I always wondered what it would be like to kiss a man with a mustache.”
I refilled her glass. “You ought to have asked him. He might have obliged you. Quentin is a very obliging fellow.”
It was proof of her advanced state of intoxication that she even considered it. She shook her head, then put both hands up to stop her head from moving.
“No, I don’t think so. I seem to remember he’s married.”
“To Cornelia,” I supplied, ever helpful.
“But that doesn’t ever stop you.” She seemed genuinely mystified.
I shrugged. “I got there first. I have a prior claim.”
She struggled a moment to count on her fingers. “No, that isn’t right, it isn’t right at all. He was betrothed to Cornelia when he met you.”
“I didn’t say I got to his heart first, Do. I got there first,” I explained with a pointed look at her crotch.
She shrieked and pulled her toga even tighter, although I don’t know why she bothered. She had tied it over her clothes and was as safe as a vestal virgin, especially in my company. I had several friends with Sapphic proclivities, but I never joined them. I always liked to be the prettiest one in the bed, so I stuck solely with men. Of course, Misha had come damned close to beating me on that score. He had had the face of a Renaissance angel. I always suspected that was one of the reasons our marriage had failed.
“You were the smart one,” she told me, staring into the contents of her glass as if she wasn’t entirely sure where the gin had come from. “I should have got it over early. Now it’s too late. Things have probably grown shut. You know, inside,” she wailed, commencing to weep into the bread basket. “And you don’t even feel the sin of it, do you? You don’t even care that it’s so wrong, so criminally wrong.”
She continued to sob. I rose and slid my hands under her arms and hefted her up. For her bulk, she was surprisingly light on her feet. It was almost like handling a child, and she curled into my shoulder as I helped her to her bedroom.
“You’re tight, Dora. No more gin for you.”
She nodded and immediately groaned. “Why does this hotel have spinning rooms?”
“I think it came with the gin, darling.”
“Oh, that makes sense.”
I pulled the covers to her chin and turned out the light. “Nighty-night, Dodo.”
“Oh, I’m not sleepy,” she announced before turning over and promptly letting out a howler of a snore.
I returned to the table and pushed the food away. I poured myself another gin and lit another cigarette. After a minute I got up and turned out the light and stepped out onto the private veranda. It was late, and Nairobi had settled into the uneasy sleep of a town that straddles the edge between here and there. I could hear an animal cry in the night, a shriek that unsettled my blood. The moon was waning, but the stars shone high overhead, slanting silver light over the slumbering town. Somewhere nearby a monkey chattered in the trees and a drunk was singing a maudlin song in mournful French. I ground out my cigarette and took in a deep, long breath, drinking in Africa, strange and wonderful Africa. And as the stars winked out, one by one, I took myself off to bed and slept the dreamless sleep of a traveller.
5
The next morning I woke to find Dora creeping around the suite, finishing the packing. She looked like hell and moaned gently from time to time as she folded and organised. The porters brought breakfast and I helped myself to the full English while Do sat nursing a weak cup of coffee, a wet handkerchief tied about her brow.
I shook my head. “Do, I hope you’re not going to be difficult in Africa.”
“Difficult?” Her voice was hollow, as if she were speaking from a great distance.
“You take things too seriously, you always have. You ought to have some fun here, kick up your heels a bit. You’re only young once, you know.”
I dunked a bit of toast into my egg and Dora’s face went green.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. I ought to go see about the bags.”
She fled with the handkerchief pressed to her mouth and went down to supervise the loading as I finished up, taking my time with a second cup of tea. I stopped by registration to settle the bill and collect a packed lunch basket. A charming young man in livery trotted out to the curb with the hamper and added it to the mound of baggage piled on the walk. Parked next to it was an absolute heap of a vehicle. It had clearly started life as an ambulance and God only knew what sins it had committed to have fallen so low. It was pocked with rust and scarred with solder marks from where fresh bits of scrap metal had been used to bandage its wounds.
As I watched, the driver jumped out and began to instruct the porters on where to shove the bags and I recognised him instantly. He was wearing exactly the same clothes as the day before, which didn’t surprise me. He had probably slept in them. I stepped up and fixed my brightest smile.
“I didn’t realise you offered chauffeur service,” I said sweetly.
He turned and pushed his hat back a little with his forefinger. “Only one service of many, Miss Drummond.”
“That truck looks like it’s being held together with spit and a prayer.”
To his credit, he smiled. “It’ll do.” He nodded toward the pile on the curb. “I see you’ve come well prepared for roughing it.”
I shrugged. “I’m a girl who likes nice things,” I told him with the faintest emphasis on the word nice. “You haven’t told me your name.�
��
He removed his hat and inclined his head in as courtly a gesture as I had ever seen. “J. Ryder White.”
“And I detect by your accent you aren’t English, but I don’t think you’re a fellow American either, Mr. White.”
“I go by Ryder. You’ve got a good ear. I’m from nowhere and everywhere, but I was born in Canada.”
“A Canadian! How delightfully rustic,” I remarked in the same honeyed tones. “Tell me, are you housebroken?”
His mouth twitched, but he didn’t smile. He bent to the pile of baggage and selected a long, narrow case chalked with indecipherable symbols from the Mombasa customs house. “I see you’ve come fully armed, Miss Drummond.” He flicked open the latches and threw back the lid. Whatever he had thought to find, the contents surprised him.
“You’re not serious. Did a friend send this with you as a practical joke?”
“I assure you, I am perfectly acquainted with that weapon.”
He hefted the Rigby and smiled a crocodile’s smile. “Princesses shouldn’t try to slay dragons. Leave that to the knights.”
“And the peasants?”
He laughed aloud at that and replaced the Rigby, snapping the case closed. “Oh, I think we’re going to have fun.”
“Don’t bet on it,” I told him, baring my teeth.
I moved aside to let him get on with the business of loading his monstrous vehicle. Dora was standing at the passenger door and I went to shove her in. She shook her head desperately.
“I need the window,” she whispered, pleading.
“Oh, for God’s sake, when will you learn to hold your liquor?” The question was rhetorical. Dora got tight on a thimbleful of sherry and I had poured half a bottle of gin down her. The least I could do was give her a chance to be sick discreetly. I sighed and clambered into the wreck, settling myself in the middle while Dora crammed herself up against the door.
“Stop moaning, Do. We haven’t even started moving yet.”
“Maybe you haven’t,” she retorted. She closed her eyes and slumped, her head angled out the window. A moment later a shadow fell over her face.
“Miss?” Ryder’s voice was gentler than I had yet heard it. Dodo lifted her head like a dog sniffing the air. He smiled at her and handed her a tin cup. “This might help.”
She took an experimental sip. “Oh. Oh. What is it?”
He shrugged. “Cure of my own making. Pawpaw juice, ginger, a few other things. Just keep drinking. I’ve got a flask full of it.”
She stared up at him, her expression worshipful. “Thank you.”
I slanted him a look and he smiled over her head at me, then lifted his hat and actually bowed to Dora. “Anytime, miss.”
A moment later he was sliding into the seat next to me until his thigh touched mine. “Shove over, princess. I’ve got to work the gears.”
I moved over as far as I could and gave him another sweet smile. “And where is my morning libation?”
“You’re not hungover,” he pointed out.
“I’m not hungover,” Dora put in as forcefully as she could. “Ladies do not imbibe to excess. I am merely overtired.”
“Of course,” Ryder said soothingly. He winked at me and I folded my arms over my chest. Dora had her eyes closed again and was sucking hard on the cup.
“What did you put in that?” I demanded.
He leaned a trifle closer than absolutely necessary, his voice low. “Exactly what I said. Pawpaw juice, ginger. And half a bottle of gin.”
“That’s what got her into this in the first place.”
He shrugged. “Best cure for a hangover is to get drunk again. Believe me, I wouldn’t do this drive sober if I could help it. She’ll thank me later.”
“Yes, but will I?”
His only answer was a laugh and a crash of gears.
“You are the driver arranged for by that nice Mr. Bates from Government House, aren’t you? I should hate to be abducted and not know it.”
“You are my passengers. Paying passengers,” he added meaningfully.
Dodo opened her eyes and reached for her bag. I slapped her hand. “Don’t you dare. Not until he’s seen us safely to Fairlight. He might just dump us in the desert and then where would we be?”
He flicked me an amused glance. “The desert? Princess, where do you think you are? This isn’t the goddamn Sahara.”
With that he gunned the engine and we roared off, away from Nairobi and the last vestiges of civilisation.
* * *
We drove for a little while in silence as he negotiated the traffic out of Nairobi. It was surprisingly busy—donkey carts and rickshaws jostling with sleek new automobiles and pedestrians laden with bundles of fruits and firewood. He did point out a few of the local landmarks, including the Turf Club and Kilimani Prison and the Japanese brothel, but I didn’t ask questions and Dodo was too busy nursing her “cure.” I stared out the window, watching as the shabby little bungalows that dotted the outskirts of Nairobi fell away. The murram road stretched upwards now, carving its way through the wilderness, a wilderness that hadn’t changed since Eve went dancing in a fig-leaf skirt. The soil was as red as good Georgia clay, and here and there a flat-topped thorn tree shaded the high savannah grasses. As far as the eye could see there was nothing but land and more land, an emptiness so big not even God himself could fill it. The miles rolled away and so did my bad mood, and when the first giraffe strode gracefully into view, I gasped aloud.
Ryder stopped the vehicle and gestured. “She’s got a foal.” I peered into the brush behind the giraffe and noticed a tiny version, teetering on impossibly long legs as it emerged. The mother turned back with a graceful gesture of the head and gave the little thing a push of encouragement. They came closer to the truck and I saw it wasn’t tiny at all—it was frankly enormous, and Ryder eased down the road, slowly so as not to startle them.
“Why did we leave?” I demanded. “I would have liked to have watched them.”
“Second rule of the bush. Never get too close to anything that has offspring.”
“What’s the first rule?”
“Food runs. If you don’t want to be food, don’t run.”
I smiled, expecting him to laugh, but he was deadly serious. His eyes were on the road, and I took the opportunity to study him a little more closely than I had the day before. He had tidied himself up a bit, even if his clothes were disreputable. His jaw was still rough with golden stubble, but his hands and face were clean. He had strong, steady hands, and I could tell from looking at them there was little he couldn’t do. Mossy always said you could tell everything you needed to know about a man from his hands. Some hands, she told me, were leaving hands. They were the wandering sort that slipped into places they shouldn’t, and they would wander right off again because those hands just couldn’t stay still. Some hands were worthless hands, fit only to hold a drink or flick ash from a cigar, and some were punishing hands that hit hard and didn’t leave a mark and those were the ones you never stayed to see twice.
But the best hands were knowing hands, Mossy told me with a slow smile. Knowing hands were capable; they could soothe a horse or a woman. They could take things apart—including your heart—and put them back together better than before. Knowing hands were rare, but if you found them, they were worth holding, at least for a little while. I looked at Ryder’s hands. They sat easily on the wheel and gearshift, coaxing instead of forcing, and I wondered how much they knew.
They had known pain; that much was certain from the scars that laced his left arm. He had been lucky. Whatever had dug itself into his arm hadn’t wanted to let go. They were long, raking white scars, like punctuation marks, dotted here and there with a full stop of knotted white scar tissue where whatever it was had hung on hard. Some men might have covered them up, rolled down the
ir shirtsleeves and pretended it hadn’t happened. Others would have told the story as soon as you met, flaunting those scars for any Desdemona who might be impressed. But Ryder didn’t even seem conscious of his. He wore them as he did his bracelets—souvenirs of somewhere he had been. I could have asked him, but I didn’t. I liked not knowing his stories yet. He was a stranger, an impossible and uncouth one, but a stranger nonetheless. And there is nothing more interesting than a stranger.
I decided to let him keep his stories and give me only the mundane things that didn’t matter. “So, you were born in Canada. Whereabouts?”
“Quebec.”
I lifted a brow. “Really? You don’t sound Québécois.”
“Left when I was a year old. My father and I travelled up and down the Mississippi and then west to California. Ended up in the Klondike by the time I was six.”
“That’s quite a lot of travelling for a young boy. What did your father do?”
“As little as possible,” he answered with a wry twist of the lips.
“And what did your mother have to say about this? Did she like being dragged around at his whims or was she afflicted with wanderlust as well?”
“She died before we left Quebec.” He said the words easily. They were just words to him. We might have had the loss of a parent in common, but not what we had done with the emptiness. Not a day went by that I didn’t think of Pink and how different my life would have been if he’d lived.
“Were you raised without a female influence, then?”
“There was an Algonquin woman who travelled with us. She took care of me and my father, although I’m not sure I’d exactly call her female. Her mustache was thicker than his.”
“How did you end up in Africa?”
“My father got lucky. He struck gold, and he worked it until the claim played out. By then he said the Klondike was getting too crowded and too cold. Africa was empty and hot. We landed here when I was twelve. Been here mostly ever since.”
“And what do you do here?”
He shrugged one solid shoulder. “This and that—lately quite a bit of guiding. I lead safaris. I have a little place on the coast where I grow sugarcane, and I own a few dukas.”
A Spear of Summer Grass Page 6
