Green City in the Sun

by Wood, Barbara

  Grace recalled the men on the hospital ship, the wounded ones who were brought aboard each day. How wonderful they were with her at first, flirting, thinking she was a nurse. And then how abruptly their attitude changed when they discovered she was a doctor and an officer: the sudden deference and arch respect, the creation of an invisible barrier that she didn't know how to cross.

  The day she had been accepted into medical school, nine years ago, Grace had been counseled by an elderly woman doctor. "You will find that your new title will be a curse as well as a blessing to you, " Dr. Smythe had said. "Many male doctors will resent your intrusion into their jealously guarded fraternity, and many male patients will judge you incapable of practicing medicine. You will not have a normal social life because you will not fit into any of the accepted feminine roles. Some men will place you on a pedestal and make you unreachable to them. Others will see you as a curiosity, a freak. You will intimidate some, amuse others. You will be entering a man's world without being accepted as a full member, and you will receive few of the privileges of that world."

  Dr. Alice Smythe, in her sixties and never married, had spoken truly. Grace Treverton was now twenty-nine—and a spinster.

  She rested back in her seat and closed her eyes.

  This was the "price" she had been warned about years ago, when she had announced her intention to pursue the study of medicine. Her father, the old earl, had refused to support her, and her brothers had laughed, predicting she was going to give up her femininity. Something of their prophecy had come true. She had indeed made sacrifices. There was little prospect now of marriage and babies, and she was, at nearly thirty and despite two years at sea working among thousands of soldiers, still a virgin.

  But not all men were like her brothers or those rough men in the dining hut. There was the hunter who had noticed her, and back in Egypt, where she had been stationed during the war, Grace had encountered officers, cultured gentlemen who had respected the stripes of rank on her sleeve and the M.D. after her name.

  And there had been Jeremy.

  In truth, Dr. Smythe's forecast had seemed extreme when Jeremy had placed the engagement ring on Grace's left hand. But that dream had gone down with the torpedoed ship, and with Jeremy, in the cold dark waters of the Mediterranean.

  The supper dishes were cleared away, and the women were asked to stand on the carriage platform while their beds were made up. Grace supported her sister-in-law by the elbow as they stood at the rail, breathing in the fresh night air and marveling at the splendor of the stars. Soon the full moon would be rising over Mount Kilimanjaro.

  England seemed a galaxy away now, almost as if it had never existed. How long ago it seemed, the departure from Southampton. And then the three weeks' steaming eastward, each day taking one farther from familiar sights and deeper into the unknown. Port Said had seemed strange to Grace now that the war was over and tourists were beginning to come back. Peasants had come aboard the ship with their trinkets and "guaranteed" ancient artifacts; vendors had circulated with food and strong Egyptian wine. Then there had been the Suez Canal, surrounded by harsh, barren desert, and Port Sudan with its stately trains of camels and Arabs in burnooses. From Aden, that bleak oasis in the wilderness, the steamer had carried them along the exotic Somali coast into the sultry Indian Ocean, where sunsets streaked the sky in crimson and gold. Finally Mombasa, the coast of British East Africa, with its bleached white buildings, coconut palms, mango trees, brilliant flowering shrubs, and Arabs hawking everything anyone could desire. Where were the mist of Suffolk, the dignified old stones of Bella Hill, the Elizabethan pubs along country lanes? They belonged to another world and in another time.

  Grace stared at the men sitting on the veranda of the dining hut, with brandy and cigars, waiting for their berths to be made up and for the journey to resume. What dreams had brought them to this wild and virgin territory? Which ones would survive; which, fail? What lay ahead for each of them at the end of this train ride? Nearly a whole day must be spent on the rails before Nairobi could be reached. After that, for Countess Treverton and her retinue, there would be many days yet in an oxcart, on the dirt track to Nyeri in the north.

  Grace trembled to think of it. Her dream, the dream she had shared with Jeremy during their cruelly brief time together, lay at the end of that savage road. It was Jeremy who had spun the glorious vision in her head, of a haven of hope and mercy in the wilderness; he had planned to come to Africa after the war and bring the Word of God to the heathen. They were going to work together, Jeremy healing the spirit and Grace, the body. They had filled their shipboard nights with talk of the mission they were going to establish in British East Africa, and now the moment was close at hand. Grace was going to build that hospital, for Jeremy; she was going to carry his beautiful light into the African darkness.

  "Dear me," said Lady Rose, leaning against her sister-in-law, "I believe I must lie down."

  Grace was startled when she looked at her; Lady Rose's face had gone as white as her muslin dress. "Rose? Are you in pain?" "No ..."

  Grace struggled with indecision. To continue on or to stay here? But this desert station was no place for a woman about to have a baby, and Nairobi lay only a day away.

  Grant us time, Lord, Grace prayed as she and Fanny put Rose to bed. Don't let it happen here. I have no chloroform, no hot water.

  There was no sign of distress on Rose's face; her expression was dreamy, as if she were far away. "Are my roses all right?" was all she said.

  After waiting for her sister-in-law to drift off to sleep, Grace removed her navy suit, brushed it out, and hung it up. Many women doctors were accused of adopting masculine traits, and Grace's continuing to wear her uniform, despite the fact that she had been discharged from the navy a year ago, was looked upon with suspicion. Which was nonsense. Grace was simply a pragmatic woman. The suit was good quality; the stripes had been removed from the sleeve; there was no reason it could not be worn for years to come.

  "Our little sailoress" Valentine had called her. Even though their father had fought in the Crimean War, and even though Valentine had enlisted to fight the Germans in East Africa and had served as a regimental officer, Grace's joining the navy had been met with great disapproval. But Grace had the Treverton stubborn streak and had followed the dictates of her conscience. Just as she was following it now, here in Africa, determined to fulfill a dream that had been born on a warship in the Mediterranean.

  Valentine didn't approve of her plan to build a hospital in the bush, bearing as he did a deep-rooted contempt for missionaries in general, and he had informed his sister that in no way was he going to assist in such a folly. But Grace did not need Valentine's help; she had a small income from her inheritance, a little support from local churches back in Suffolk, and she was possessed of a backbone as stiff as any man's.

  A moan came from Lady Rose's berth. Grace turned sharply. Her fragile sister-in-law lay breathing deeply with her hands on her abdomen.

  "Are you all right?" Grace asked.

  Rose smiled. "We are fine."

  Grace smiled back, comfortingly, to mask her fear. So many miles, so many days to go yet—and the worst of the journey still ahead!

  "Is he kicking?" she asked, and Rose nodded.

  It had been decided that the baby would be named Arthur, for the younger brother who had been killed in France in the first year of the war. The Honorable Arthur Currie Treverton, one of the first brave boys to sign up when England went to war.

  The whistle blew, and the train began to roll. Grace looked out the window and saw the reassuring lights of Voi station fall behind; then there was night all around. The train chuffed across a bleak and sterile landscape, following an old slave route to Lake Victoria. This modern year of 1919 was but an eye's blink from the days of Arab caravans, when chained Africans had trudged this way to the slave ships on the coast and thus to their doom. The policing of this route, to stop illegal slaving, had been part of the way the British governm
ent's propaganda had explained the embarrassment of a railway that had cost so much and seemed to go nowhere. As golden sparks from the engine flew past her window, Grace imagined the camps of those slavers, squatting under the stars, their prisoners moaning in chains, bewildered. What had it been like for those innocent Africans to be taken away on terrible ships and forced to serve masters on the other side of the world?

  Grace made sure the windows were tightly closed. She had heard stories of man-eating lions that pulled people from train windows. This was a wild and uncivilized country, the night more treacherous than the day. Never had she felt so vulnerable, so isolated. There was no communication between the first-class carriages; they were like a string of little boxes hurtling through the night with no way to contact the passengers in the next cars, no way to stop the train. Grace prayed that they would make it to Nairobi in time.

  She tried to relax, keeping an eye on Rose, who appeared to be sleeping, and thinking of what she would do tomorrow. We will stay in Nairobi, she decided. We will not continue on until after the baby is born.

  Valentine would be petulant, of course, because delay in Nairobi could mean a delay of three or more months, as the long rains were due to start soon and all travel into the Central Province would then be impossible. But Grace would deal with her brother. She was no less anxious than he to have his wife established in the big house he had built, but for the safety of mother and child Grace was going to insist that they wait.

  Knowing that she would not be able to sleep, Grace decided to begin writing in her new journal. It had been a gift from one of her professors in medical school, a handsome volume bound in Moroccan leather with giltedged pages. She had waited until now to start it—waited for the first day of her new life.

  She had just written "February 10, 1919" on the opening page when Rose screamed.

  The baby was coming.

  2

  S

  HE WAS FURIOUS WITH HER BROTHER.

  Black clouds hung over the hills, threateningly, like vultures. And here they were, two women, six servants, and fourteen Africans, inching their way up a perilous dirt track in five wagons loaded with all their worldly possessions. What protection were the canvas covers going to be against a sudden torrent? What was Valentine going to say when he saw the ruined Aubusson carpet, the sodden paintings from Bella Hill? How was he going to soothe Rose when she saw that the lace tablecloth and silk gowns were destroyed by rain? This was a preposterous undertaking, bringing all this useless clutter into a wilderness! Valentine was insane.

  Grace looked at her sister-in-law, who was bundled up in a fur coat and staring ahead as if she could see what lay at the end of this trail.

  Rose was still very weak; she was shockingly pale. But she had refused to stay in Nairobi, especially after she had received the message from Valentine telling her to come ahead. Grace had tried to stand her ground, but there was Rose, the next morning, giving orders to her English servants to have the wagons loaded. Grace could not dissuade her sister-in-law from going, and so now here they were, in the middle of a wild land, hacking their way through mango trees and banana plants, fighting insects and being kept awake at night in their tents by the roar of lions and cheetahs. And the heavy rains about to break!

  The sound of the baby crying made Grace turn around and look at the wagon behind her. Mrs. Pembroke, the nanny, produced a feeding bottle and quieted it.

  Grace frowned. The way that baby had survived was a miracle. When the lifeless little form had appeared on the sheets, Grace had thought certain it was dead. She had not found a heartbeat, and its face was blue. But she had blown into its mouth all the same—and it lived! A small, weak baby girl, but alive and growing stronger every day.

  Grace thought about the young woman at her side. Except for the episode at the Norfolk Hotel, when she had insisted they continue on to Nyeri, Lady Rose had been silent since the birth of the baby. No, Grace reminded herself now, there had been one other exception: When pressed to give the child a name, Rose had said simply, "Mona." Grace had not known what to make of it until she had seen the romantic novel Rose had been reading on the journey. The heroine's name was Mona.

  Grace had had no choice but to allow it to stand as the baby's name because her brother had made no provision in the event the baby should be a girl. In his vanity and single-minded obsession to found a dynasty, Valentine had never dreamed that he would produce anything other than a son. Grace had the baby baptized and had then sent word to her brother.

  His response had been: "Come at once! All is ready!"

  In the ten days since leaving Nairobi, Lady Rose had spoken not one word. Her eyes, large and dark and looking feverish, remained fixed ahead while her small white hands worked themselves inside the ermine muff. She sat inclined forward as she rode in the wagon, as if urging the oxen on. When spoken to, she did not reply; when the baby was put in her arms, she regarded it vacantly. The only interest she had shown, besides her determination to see the new house, was in her rosebushes, which rode beside her in the wagon.

  It is the trauma of the birth that has caused this, Grace decided. And the shock of so many changes all at once. She'll be better once she's in the new house.

  Before meeting Valentine on her seventeenth birthday, three years ago, Rose had lived a sheltered life. And even after her engagement to the young earl Rose had been exposed to little social life; she married him three months after the first meeting and moved into Bella Hill to be swallowed up by its Tudor shadows.

  It was a mystery to everyone why Valentine had chosen shy, dreaming Rose when he had his pick of every eligible young woman in England. Valentine was dashing, handsome, wealthy and had recently inherited a title. Granted, Rose was beautiful, in an insubstantial way—she reminded Grace of the tragic maidens Poe wrote about—but she tended to live in another world, and Grace feared she was no match for a force like Valentine.

  Yet he had chosen her, and she had accepted him at once. And she had brought her incandescence into the dark, stately halls of Bella Hill.

  Grace was anxious to see what her brother had accomplished in these past twelve months. People had voiced skepticism, declaring that he had taken on what looked to be an impossible task. But Grace knew that her brother was capable of incredible things.

  Valentine Treverton was a passionate man with a restless nature, a man of such appetite for life that he had pronounced England stifling. He longed for a virgin world that he could make his own, where he would be the law, and where there were no traditions and precedents to tell him what to do.

  Anyone who had ever met Valentine was dazzled by him. He walked with a long stride and greeted people with arms held wide as if for an embrace. His laugh was deep and honest and spontaneous. And he was so handsome that even men were charmed by him. But Grace knew his other side: his temper; his moods; his utter conceit and belief that nearly everyone else was inferior to himself. Grace had no doubt that he was going to stamp this wilderness beneath his boot.

  The first raindrops made everyone look up at the sky. In an instant the Africans were shouting to one another in rapid Kikuyu and gesturing wildly. Grace didn't have to understand the language to know what they were saying. If heavy rain fell, this road would turn into an impassable bog.

  "Che Che!" she called to the Kikuyu headman.

  He came back to her wagon. "Yes, memsaab?"

  "How much farther is it to the estate?"

  He shrugged and held up five fingers.

  Grace gave him an impatient look. What did the man mean? Five miles? Five hours? God forbid, five days? She looked up at the sky. The clouds were low, the color of charcoal; banana fronds stirred in an ominous wind. "We must hurry, Che Che," she said. "Can't we go faster?" The lead wagon seemed to Grace to creep at a snail's pace; the two men with rifles, riding lookout for wild animals, appeared to be dozing; and the natives dressed in goatskins and carrying spears merely strolled alongside.

  The headman nodded to Grace and
walked ahead to the first wagon, where he shouted orders in Kikuyu to the driver. But the wagon moved no faster.

  Checking the urge to jump down from her wagon and prod the oxen herself, Grace wished now that she had listened to the advice of a gentleman she had met at the Blue Posts Hotel in Thika. He had explained to her that her headman's name Che Che meant "slow" in Kikuyu and that no doubt there was a good reason for his being called that. But Grace had not been inclined to hire a different headman in the middle of a journey, and as a result, here she was, between the town of Nyeri and her brother's estate, in the prelude of a storm.

  She turned around and saw that Mrs. Pembroke had wisely retreated under the cover of the wagon's canvas roof, the baby in her arms, with Fanny, Rose's personal maid, sitting next to her, looking miserable. All the men were walking beside the wagons and carrying guns; even old Fitzpatrick, the butler who had come with them from Bella Hill, was looking out of character in his khakis and sun helmet.

  Grace realized she might almost think this a comical parade if she weren't so anxious, so angry.

  When she looked at her sister-in-law again, Grace was surprised to see a faint smile on the pale lips. She wondered what Lady Rose was thinking.

  In fact, Lady Rose was concentrating on the sanctuary that lay at the end of this horrible trail: Bella Two, the home Valentine had built for her. He had written in a letter five months ago:

  Our estate lies in a valley forty miles wide, between Mount Kenya and the Aberdare Range, just thirty miles south of the equator. We stand at over five thousand feet above sea level, and there is a deep, lush gorge on our property down which the Chania River tumbles and churns. The house is unique. It is of my own design, something new, for this new country. I have decided to name it Bella Two, or Bella Too; you can choose which. It is a proper house complete with library, music room, and nursery for our son.