A Spear of Summer Grass

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  I had been genuinely sorry to hear he’d been shipped off to Africa, but now that I saw his work, I realised it might well have been the making of him. His paintings were enormous, reckless things, barely containing his passion within the boundaries of the canvas. He had taken Africa as his muse and subject and every piece depicted either landscape or dark faces. They were interesting faces, too, full of character and mystery, and the closer I looked the more I wanted to.

  I stepped back and saw him watching me with an expectant expression.

  “They’re rather good, aren’t they?”

  “They’re brilliant and you know it. I’d buy the lot if I could,” I told him truthfully.

  “I’d let you if I could,” he said with a smile. “There’s a fellow named Hillenbrank who means to open a gallery in Nairobi. He’s promised me a show when he gets it off the ground.”

  It was a small thing, a gallery exhibition in a backwater like Nairobi, particularly for an artist who had shown in New York. But Kit was happy and I was the last person who would rain on that particular parade. Like most artists, he was prone to dark moods and sulking fits, and I was practiced at tap dancing around them.

  I smiled widely and slipped my hand in his. “You deserve it, darling. They’re important.”

  Important is the magic word with artists, the “open sesame” that causes them to drop their guard and let you inside. They all want to think that they are contributing something to humanity, bless them, and nothing fuels their creative fire like believing they will sign their names in the history books with daubs of oil paint. Still, I meant it. There was something truly moving about his art, a sureness to his technique that had not been there before and a newfound confidence in what he wanted to say. And I wanted to listen.

  He fixed a wretched lunch we didn’t eat and made up for it with a sturdy batch of gin-and-tonics.

  “The tonic water keeps malaria at bay,” he told me.

  “Really?”

  “No. It’s something the Brits made up to justify drinking enough gin to stagger a sailor. But it sounds good,” he added with an impish smile.

  He reached for me then and I didn’t put up much of a fight. Some men want a lot of resistance; it makes them feel like conquering heroes. But others, like Kit, are content with a token refusal. I said no, but his hand was already inside my shirt, and I didn’t say it again. I had forgotten about his hands. They might have been leaving hands, but while they hung around, they were damned good at what they did. We tried a few old favourites and a couple of new things, and by the time we finished, we were both sticking to the sheets. Africa was hot and still that afternoon and I was happy to drowse with a gin in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

  “God, I had forgotten how good you are at that,” he said. “Why did we ever stop seeing each other?”

  “I left for London to go to a wedding.”

  “So? That shouldn’t have stopped us.”

  “I was the bride.”

  He laughed and reached for his own glass. His other hand was tucked behind his head, showing off his chest to excellent advantage. He was a brilliant poser, always settling into a position designed to accentuate the long, handsome lines of his body, as if an invisible life class hovered nearby, charcoal in hand, waiting to capture his likeness. He turned his face so it was in three-quarter profile.

  “What happened to that husband?”

  “Divorced. He’s my lawyer now. And there’s been another since him. A Russian prince who died on me before I could get my divorce.”

  “Poor darling Delilah. Unlucky in love,” he murmured into my hair.

  I got up then and went to the ancient gramophone by the window, wearing nothing but the black silk ribbon at my wrist. I sorted through the recordings before slipping one onto the machine. I wound it up and dropped the needle on “The Sheik of Araby.” I suddenly felt a little jangly and the music suited my mood.

  “Tell me about this place,” I instructed him. “I want to hear about the neighbours and what you do for fun.”

  “Well, you’ll be the belle of the ball if that’s what you’re worried about,” he said with a grin. He knew me too well. “The king and queen, appropriately enough, are Rex and Helen Farraday. They own a place a little farther up in the hills. He’s trying to ranch cattle but the poor brutes keep dying off. British, of course. They came out here and set up as the reigning pair and so far everyone is happy to let them.”

  “I know them. Friends of Mossy’s—although I think Helen is a bit younger. Rex danced with me at my coming-out party. Quite dashing and perfectly tailored.”

  “Still is, although how he manages in this heat, I cannot understand,” Kit said, his mouth a little rueful. I dropped a kiss to keep it from turning outright petulant. He reached for me, but I danced away and went to change the record.

  “Keep talking. Who else is here?”

  “There’s a doctor named Stevenson, a missionary named Halliwell who lives with his sister, a very upright and tightly buttoned sort. She won’t approve of you at all.” I pulled a face and he went on. “Then there’s Gervase Pemberton and his Spanish wife, Bianca.”

  “I know them, too. He’s cadaverously thin? Claims to be a poet? I met them in Paris. Is she still pretending to be a dancer?”

  “God, yes. It’s horrifying. If I have to sit through another one of her fan dances, I’m going to fling myself into the mouth of the nearest crocodile. He damaged his lungs during the war, so they came here to live off a bit of family land that no one wanted. She’s bitter and he’s grim. They’re perfect for one another.”

  “Sounds like it.”

  His eyes sharpened. “Did you bring that pet cousin of yours along? What was her name?”

  “Dora. Yes, I brought Dodo. Why?”

  “I always thought I’d like to take a crack at her. Prim girls sometimes conceal the most surprising secrets.”

  I laughed. “Not Dodo. She’s a virgin, you know. And a very good Christian.”

  “Oh, never mind, then. I do prefer a girl who knows how to participate,” he said with a leer at my bottom.

  He reached out again and this time I let him catch me. When I was buttoning up afterwards, we fell to talking about the locals again.

  “What do you know about the fellow who drove me out here? Ryder White. He may well be the most uncouth man I’ve ever met.”

  I expected Kit to agree but his expression turned sober. “Uncouth, but entirely sterling of character—one of the best. I hate him.”

  “Because you can’t measure up?”

  “Precisely. The natives adore him, and he’s bedded all the best-looking women for a hundred miles. I don’t need the competition.”

  I thought of Ryder’s violent defense of one woman in particular. “I presume you know the Wickendens? I watched Ryder horsewhip Anthony Wickenden in the Nairobi train station yesterday.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “Did he, by God? Wish I’d been there to see it. I might have gotten in a few licks myself. Jude Wickenden is the handsomest woman in Africa by a long shot, at least until you arrived,” he corrected quickly. He nuzzled my neck by way of apology for the slight. “She was married once before and her husband disappeared into the bush during the war. She went to live with an aunt who happens to be crazy as a bedbug. When Jude had the fellow declared legally dead, the aunt threatened to shoot her. They live in the same house now, but they don’t speak. The old woman still goes out into the bush looking for the husband who disappeared.”

  I thought of all the young men who hadn’t come back from the war in Europe and I understood. “Sometimes it’s difficult to accept that they’re gone without a body to bury.” I thought of the shreds of Johnny’s uniform and pushed them out of my head.

  Kit shrugged. “She’s Jude’s aunt, not his. You’d
have thought the old girl would have taken Jude’s part. Still, poor Jude was out of the frying pan and into the fire. Wickenden’s a drinker.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  “But I’m a delight when I drink,” he said, raising his glass and pressing a lingering kiss to my neck. “Wickenden’s a mean one. Slaps her around, which she says she can handle herself, but this last time he worked her over pretty hard. Left bruises in all the wrong places. Ryder takes it upon himself to look after her. He loves to play Lancelot to damsels in distress.”

  He raised his glass then and drained the last of the gin. His eyelids began to droop. The heat, the liquor and the exertion had taken their toll. His hand went slack and the glass rolled gently to the mattress. I dropped a kiss to his beautiful, sulky mouth and tied my silk scarf around one of his wrists, hitching it firmly to the bedpost. I saw myself out.

  7

  I returned to Fairlight to find Dora supervising a crew of young men as they scrubbed the kitchen. She threw up her hands when she saw me and joined me on the veranda for a sundowner.

  “It’s impossible. I can’t get them to understand that one doesn’t clean with dirty water and the soiled rags must be changed for new ones. All they’re doing at this point is moving the filth around. At least I found an assortment of tins that look safe enough. I told Pierre to have them opened and heated up for dinner.”

  “Told Pierre? In what language, pig Latin?”

  “Pantomime. If nothing else my skills at charades should improve vastly from living here. And I haven’t the faintest notion what’s in the tins. The labels have all come off, so it will just be a sort of surprise potluck.”

  “Drink more and it won’t matter,” I suggested. She hesitated and I waved the bottle at her impatiently. “For God’s sake, Dora, it’s just a drink. Don’t be such a goose.”

  With reluctant fingers she held out her glass for a refill. My bad influence was beginning to take hold, I decided. “Where did you get off to? I began to think a lion might have carried you away.”

  I gave her a loaded smile. “Our tenant is none other than Kit Parrymore.”

  She choked on her gin and it was a full minute before she could speak again. “You’re joking.”

  “I would never joke about that body,” I said, stretching my arms high overhead.

  “Oh, Delilah, you didn’t!”

  I shrugged. “It was either that or eat his cooking for lunch. And he’s a rotten cook.”

  “What is he doing in Africa?”

  I told her and filled her in on the neighbours while I was at it. When I finished, she passed me an envelope.

  “This came while you were fornicating with the neighbour.”

  I took it and lifted a brow. “Don’t be poisonous, Dora. Hmm. Heavy stationery. Someone likes expensive paper.” I sniffed. “And jasmine perfume. God, it smells like a French whore rolled herself in the envelope.”

  I pulled out a note and squinted at the scrawl of green ink, then passed it to Dora. “I can’t make it out. What does it say?”

  She peered at it, holding it this way and that like a cryptographer studying a particularly tricky cipher. “Apparently Helen Farraday is delighted you’ve come and would like to host a little dinner in your honour to introduce you to the neighbourhood.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “She doesn’t let grass grow under her feet, does she? But then she never did.” Mossy had used her as an object lesson when I was making my debut of how one ought not to behave. Helen had come out when I was still in pigtails and Mossy was changing husbands as often as she changed her knickers. A Chicago heiress, Helen had taken one look at the pickings in the windy city, loaded up her meatpacking money and headed for London. She wanted an Englishman, someone with blue blood and a five-hundred-year-old name. She’d gotten neither with Rex. His family money had come the generation before and left with it, too. But he was charming as the devil and twice as handsome. Mossy always said he was the best dancer she’d ever met, and he could have had his pick of a dozen girls. Why he chose Helen was anybody’s guess, although Mossy suspected he’d been intrigued by the gossip that Helen was a nymphomaniac who had seduced three of her tutors and one of the housemaids. Of course, the money wouldn’t have been much of a deterrent, and from all accounts the marriage had been happy enough. There was infidelity of course, but since it was on both sides, nobody had reason to complain.

  Dora tucked the note back into the envelope. “Will you go?”

  “Of course. And you’re coming with me.”

  “I wasn’t invited,” Dora said pointedly.

  I shrugged. “Since when has that ever stopped me? Helen must not realise you’re here or she would have included you. I’ll write and let her know. Besides, Kit will be happy to see you. He asked after you today.”

  “Did he?” If the light had been better, I was quite sure I would have seen her blush.

  I slept a little better that night, probably for being in a bed at last. Dora had done a marvelous job of settling me into the master suite. I gave her Mossy’s old room even though it boasted a prettier bed and a frilly little dressing table that she wouldn’t even look at twice, much less actually use. But Nigel’s suite had bookcases and a view of the lake, and it suited me just fine, particularly when Dora hung the fresh mosquito netting and checked under the bed for scorpions.

  “All clear,” she informed me as she scooted out from under the bed. She was brandishing a Chinese slipper, prepared to do battle with any creepy-crawlies. She rose and tightened the belt on her robe. “I’m just across the hall if you need me in the night.”

  Dora always slept within calling distance. It was more for peace of mind than anything else. I seldom needed her, but it made me feel better to know she was around if I did. Sometimes when the nightmares got too bad and I couldn’t sleep I would give her a shout and we played gin rummy. It was an ongoing game, and she was ahead of me in the tally by five thousand points, but I hoped to make it up eventually. I suspected she was cheating, but I never could figure out how.

  “Good night, Do.”

  She left and I turned over, watching the stars shimmer to life over the lake. I wondered if the lions would be out, and that led me to think about Ryder White. And before I knew it, I slid into sleep.

  * * *

  I woke up to a painfully bright morning and Dora carrying in my breakfast tray.

  “Good morning, Delilah.”

  “Dodo,” I croaked. I waved at the window. “Pull those curtains, will you? No sun should be that bright at this hour.”

  “It’s nearly eleven,” she said. She busied herself putting out towels and running the bath, every brisk move a reproof for my slothfulness.

  “I suppose I overslept,” I said contritely. “But there’s nothing much to get up for, is there?”

  “There are callers, actually. They have been here since daybreak.”

  “Callers? What sort of callers?”

  She gave me a pinched look. “Local folk.”

  “Local folk? You mean Africans?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  “Well, good grief, what do they want with me?”

  Dora bit back a smile and adopted a lofty tone. “They seem to be suffering from various ailments. If I understand Pierre correctly, it is their belief that the lady of the house can provide them with succour.”

  “Succour? Do, it’s too early for practical jokes.”

  “See for yourself.”

  “Are you serious? There are really natives here who expect me to play Florence-bloody-Nightingale?”

  “Language, Delilah.” She poured out the tea, but I bounded out of bed. I washed and dressed in record time, and was out the door before the tea even had a chance to cool. And there they we
re. Twenty, maybe thirty of them. Dressed in lengths of fabric wound up in various ways with necklaces and bracelets of beads strung onto copper wires. Some of them had bandages, others had crutches. Some clutched sick babies and others their own stomachs.

  I was aware of Dora at my elbow and I muttered out of the side of my mouth at her, “It looks like Saturday night at Bellevue.”

  Seeing them up close had sobered her. “I suppose we could do something,” she said doubtfully. “We don’t have much in the way of medicines, really. Do you think they’d like some bromide salts?”

  They were staring at me, but not expectantly. Their expressions were blank, the faces of people who had spent their hopes too many times in all the wrong places.

  I turned to Dora. “Fetch whatever medical supplies we have, and bring a few extra sheets we can tear up for bandages.”

  Just as she dashed off, Ryder appeared, sauntering in without a care in the world, whistling a tune with his rifle slung over his shoulder. I held up a hand. “Don’t even think of staying unless you mean to help.”

  He surveyed the scene. “Playing at being the Lady with the Lamp, are we? I wouldn’t have thought the role suited you. Mind you don’t accidentally amputate something you shouldn’t.”

  Something had riled him, but I couldn’t imagine what and I didn’t care to try.

  “You can either help me or you can get lost. I don’t particularly care which.”

  He thought about it, but after a moment he turned and signalled to a young man who had followed him up the path. The fellow was a native African, tall and slender like the people who sat in my garden, but the resemblance ended there. He wore a sort of toga of scarlet cotton and his hair was plaited into long, intricate braids that had been reddened with ochre dust. Long strings of beads hung across his chest and wrapped around his wrists, and he carried a tall spear. When he rested it was on one leg, the other tucked up like a stork, and his gaze was solemn and watchful. He helped Ryder move a table outside and together they carried hot water and tore up sheets and generally made themselves useful.