Green City in the Sun

by Wood, Barbara

  Valentine had not needed to say more; Rose had at once pictured the new house, the house that was going to be hers, not a place where she felt like an outsider, surrounded by the grim portraits of Treverton ancestors. It was a house where she was going to be sole mistress at last, with the keys hanging at her waist.

  Since the birth of the baby four weeks before, Rose had thought of nothing other than the new house. She had found that if she concentrated very hard and focused all her energy upon Bella Two, she would not have to think about the "other thing."

  She was fantasizing now about the hours she was going to spend directing the installation of draperies, the placement of chairs and tables, the arrangements of flowers. And most important, Rose was going to see that the correct etiquette was followed for her At Homes: the polishing of the tea service that had been given to her grandmother by the Duchess of Bedford; the baking of scones and sponge cakes; the making of clotted cream; teaching the staff the proper way to make finger sandwiches, that they slice the cucumber just so. And Rose herself would hold the key to the tea caddy, carefully measuring out the Earl Grey and Oolong.

  Just because one was in Africa, she had decided, there was no reason for one to stop being civilized. One must hold to decorum at all costs. Rose knew that her sister-in-law did not approve of, as Grace had put it, the "monstrous collection of baggage" Rose had brought with her, but Grace did not understand social obligation. That was because Grace was not going to be mistress of a five-thousand-acre plantation or the countess of Treverton, who had a responsibility to set high standards. Grace had come to Africa with but two trunks—one for her clothes and books, the other containing medical supplies!

  Rose now walked in her mind through the rooms of the new house, seeing them as Valentine had described them, with their polished wood and stone columns, the beam ceilings, the fireplace as large as a theater stage. She saw the music room, where she would play the grand piano which was now traveling in the last wagon. The legs had been removed to be shipped separately from London. She saw the billiard room with its Savonnerie carpet, the type the royal family used, and there was even, in the first wagon, a carefully packed crystal chandelier for the dining room.

  But when Rose's fantasy brought her to the door of the bedroom, she stopped short.

  Grace, sitting beside her in the wagon, did not see the sudden stiffening of Rose's body, the smile turn into a thin line. She did not know of the thumping heart, the fresh anxiety. Rose kept it all to herself, for it was something no one must ever know.

  Valentine came into her mind and she shivered. Rose already knew how he was going to react to the baby: He would pretend that nothing had happened, that little Mona hadn't even been born. He would give Rose that familiar look, that wanting look, and then he would start making those demands on her body again.

  How overjoyed she had been, last year, to be told she was pregnant. As propriety demanded, Valentine had immediately removed himself to a separate bedroom, and Rose had luxuriated in seven months of freedom. Had the baby been a boy, Valentine would have been satisfied. But now he would renew his efforts to produce an heir, and she shuddered to think of it.

  Rose had gone to Valentine a virgin and ignorant of the ways of men with women. Her wedding night had shocked her, and then revulsion had set in. It had gotten so that she would lie in bed, tense, hardly breathing, listening for his footsteps. And he would come, under the cover of darkness, and use her like an animal. But Rose had learned to take herself out of the act. When she sensed this was going to be one of his nights, she would drink laudanum before retiring and then retreat into a fantasy while he did his work. They never spoke of it, not even in the crucial moments, but Rose had once considered speaking to Grace about it. Then she had changed her mind, remembering that even though her sister-in-law was a medical doctor, she was still a maiden lady and therefore would know nothing about these matters. So Rose let the matter rest, assuming it was like this between all husbands and wives.

  There was a sudden commotion up ahead; men at the front of the line shouted excitedly, and Che Che came running, for the first time in his life Grace had no doubt, to announce that they had reached the Chania River.

  Grace's heart leaped. The Chania! Farthest frontier of Kikuyu territory! And on the other side of it, her brother's plantation!

  Everyone hurried now, even the animals, as if sensing they were near the end of their long trek. The men pushed and heaved the wagons across the river, which was low in these last days of the dry season, and up the grassy slope that marked the beginning of Valentine's land.

  Rose came to life. She clutched her sister-in-law's hand and smiled. Grace was almost delirious. The end at last! After weeks on the ocean and in trains and wagons, of sleeping in tents and being eaten by insects, their destination lay just over this rise. A proper house, real beds, English meals . . . But more, the finish to all her wandering and travels; the place where she and Jeremy had planned to begin their life together. Perhaps, if he wasn't dead, as she thinly hoped, he would find her here, at last.

  When a sign, TREVERTON ESTATE, tacked to the trunk of a chestnut tree came into view, the company cheered. Even old Fitzpatrick, the staid butler, threw his sun helmet into the air. The baby began to cry; the wagons creaked and lurched; the Africans slapped the animals and goaded them on.

  They crested the rise and were met by a breathtaking sight: majestic Mount Kenya rising into a crown of mist. Just as Valentine had described it! And over there, to the southwest, at the edge of the cleared forest, exactly where he had said he had built it, on a gently rising hill that commanded a view of the mountain and valley—

  Everyone fell silent. A cold wind whistled down from the snowy peaks, tugging at skirts and hats, making the wagon canvas snap loudly in the silence. The only sound to be heard as everyone stared was the cry of baby Mona.

  Grace blinked in disbelief. And Rose whispered, "But ... there's nothing here! No house, no buildings ... nothing at all..."

  3

  H

  ELLO THERE!"

  Everyone turned to see Valentine riding up. He wore Hessian boots, jodhpurs, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the top buttons undone, and he was bareheaded. As if it weren't a cold day, Grace thought in annoyance. As if it weren't about to rain!

  "You've arrived!" he shouted as he jumped down from his horse and strode over to his wife. Valentine swept Rose into his arms and kissed her hard on the mouth. "Welcome home, darling."

  He turned to Grace, his arms held out. "Ah, and here's the blessed little doctoress!" But when he tried to embrace her, Grace pulled away. "Valentine," she said sharply, "where is the house?"

  "Why, it's right there! Can't you see it?" He waved toward the hill that had recently been cleared of trees and brush. "At least, it will be there. Come now, you look like a rainy day."

  "It is a rainy day, Val, and we're tired and hungry. Do you mean to tell me the house isn't even built yet?"

  "Things move slowly in Africa, old girl. You'll learn that soon enough. We have a tent camp down by the river."

  "Valentine, you can't possibly expect us to—"

  "Here," he said as he took her arm, "let me introduce you to our nearest neighbor. He's very good at polo. Has a handicap of six. Grace, please meet Sir James Donald. James, my sister, Grace Treverton."

  He had come riding up with Valentine and was pragmatically dressed in rugged pants and safari jacket, with a pith helmet on his head. When he dismounted, Grace noticed that he walked with a slight limp.

  Sir James was smiling before he reached her; it was a shy, almost self-conscious smile, and she saw that he couldn't be much older than she, possibly thirty-one or thirty-two. He surprised her when he held out his hand to shake hers, something an English gentleman would never do with a lady. Then he said in a cultured voice, "Val tells me you're a doctor," and Grace said, "Yes," defensively. But when he said, "That's bloody marvelous. We desperately need doctors here," Grace suddenly noticed
how handsome he was.

  They stood silently for the moment, their gazes held, their hands still clasped, and then Valentine said, "Let me show you around the new homestead."

  Grace watched Sir James return to his horse. He was a tall, slim man, and he carried himself very straight, almost stiffly, as if to compensate for the limp.

  Lady Rose had stayed back by the wagon with a lost look on her face. When her husband called to her, she said in a timid voice, "Valentine, dear, don't you want to see the baby?"

  A shadow briefly crossed his handsome face; then he said exuberantly, "Come along now! Take a look 'round your new home!"

  Mrs. Pembroke followed Lady Rose into the pony wagon and sat between the two sisters-in-law. Grace moved the blanket from Mona's face and saw that the baby was strangely quiet.

  The wagon, driven by one of Valentine's Africans, took them to the gentle hill that rose from the forest. As Grace stepped down to the red earth, she asked her brother again why the house wasn't built.

  "With limited labor available I had to establish priorities. It was more important to get my seedlings transplanted before the rains than to have the house built. In fact, the seedling nursery was the first thing that went up. Once the planting is done in the fields, I'll have the workers start on the house."

  "Why did you tell us the house was finished?"

  "Because I wanted my wife here with me. If I had told her she must live in a tent for another year, she would not have come."

  When they reached the crest of the hill, Grace received a shock. The forest was gone; a magnificent vista stood before her. After weeks of cutting her way through dense growth, Grace was breathless to see so much sky. She felt as if she floated in space. The valley below, sweeping away to the foot of Mount Kenya, had been cleared of all trees and bracken.

  Valentine ran his hands through his thick black hair. "What do you think, old girl? Can you see it? Acres and acres as far as the eye can see of rich green coffee trees covered with white blossoms, as if a wedding party had passed through. And bright red berries waiting to be picked!"

  Grace was impressed. Her brother seemed to have worked a small miracle in this wilderness that stood at the back of beyond. The forest ended abruptly at the edge of newly tilled soil, and great rows of holes marched in a straight and orderly fashion to the misty ends of the valley—surprisingly large holes, Grace thought, knee-deep and as wide as a man, accompanied in their parade by neat lines of banana trees.

  "There will be six hundred coffee bushes to an acre," Valentine explained, his voice filled with pride. "And that's five thousand acres, Grace! In three or four years our first harvest will be in. Those banana trees are for shade—coffee requires shade, you know. I've also planted imported jacaranda trees, which will stand along those borders." He waved an arm. "In years to come they'll be flowering with lavender blossoms. Can you see it? This will be the view from the front of the house.

  "Over there," Valentine said, pointing to an enormous flat area down by the river, "is the seedling nursery. There's a furrow from the Chania to irrigate it. Those chaps down there are uprooting the weak seedlings. That's the secret of a successful crop, Grace. Some growers make the mistake of leaving the weak ones in for another year, thinking it'll strengthen them, but the trick is just to pull them out and plant new seed. The world doesn't know it yet, Grace; but someday there is going to be a great demand for Nairobi coffee, and it's all going to come from the Treverton Estate!"

  "How do you know so much about growing coffee, Val?"

  "The padres of the mission where I bought the seeds have been helpful. Plus there're some decent blokes in Nairobi willing to share tips. And Karen's taught me a lot."

  "Karen?"

  "The Baroness von Blixen. She has a coffee estate out by Ngong. We're using the bronze-tip variety here. The best arabica seeds in the world, Grace. I planted them a year ago when I came back from German East Africa." He looked up at the pearl gray sky. "As soon as the rains begin, we'll transplant the seedlings."

  Grace stared in fascination at the regiment of African women in the fields, dressed in soft brown hides, with babies on their backs, bent straight-legged and tamping the dirt inside the holes with their hands. "Why are there mostly women and children working, Val? Why are there so few men?"

  "Those chaps down there are the ones that felt like working. The rest are no doubt sitting under a tree down by the river, drinking beer. It's bloody difficult to get them to work. Have to keep after them all the time. Once my back is turned, they're off into the bush. You see, by Kikuyu tradition, all farm work is done by women. It is beneath a man's dignity to tend crops. Men were the warriors; they did all the fighting."

  "Do they still fight?"

  "We put a stop to that. The Kikuyu and Masai were constantly at war, raiding one another's villages, stealing cattle and women. We took away their spears and shields, and now they simply do nothing."

  "Well, you can't force them to work."

  "Actually, we can."

  Grace had heard about the Native Labor Act back in England when the archbishop of Canterbury had attacked the practice loudly in the House of Lords, calling it modern slavery. Kikuyu men, once warriors but now idle and without employment, were being forced to work on white settler farms, the rationale being that the labor gave them something to do and that their tribe benefited from the food, clothing, and medical care they received in return.

  "The war with Germany nearly did us in, Grace. British East Africa is headed for certain bankruptcy if we don't find a way to generate revenue. This can be gotten only through agriculture and export. The white farmer can't do it single-handedly, so if we all work together, everyone—natives and Europeans—will benefit. And I'm going to fight to make this new country work, Grace. I didn't come here to fail. Others like me, like Sir James, we're bloody struggling to bring East Africa out of the Pleistocene and into the modern age. And we're dragging its people with us, kicking and screaming if we must."

  She looked down at the cleared fields, at the hundreds of rows waiting for their seedlings, and said, "There are more natives here than I expected. I had understood from the Land Office that we had purchased vacant land."

  "We did."

  "Then where did all these women and children come from?"

  "Across the river." Valentine pointed, and Grace turned around. On the opposite bank, through cedars and olive trees, she could see clearings, small native plots with round thatched huts and vegetable gardens. "However," Valentine said, "that's our land, too. It extends quite a bit in that direction."

  "People are living on your land?"

  "They're squatters. It's a system the Colonial Office worked out. The Africans can have their shambas—that's their word for 'farm plot'—on our land if in return they work for us. We take care of them, settle their disputes, bring a doctor 'round if they need it, provide them with food and clothing, and they work the land for us."

  "It sounds very feudal."

  "As a matter of fact, that's exactly what it is."

  "But..." Grace frowned. "Weren't they already here before you bought the land?"

  "Nothing was stolen from them, if that's what you're thinking. The Crown made an offer to their headman that he couldn't refuse. It made him a chief—the Kikuyu don't have chiefs—and gave him all sorts of authority. In return, he sold the land for some beads and copper wire. It's all legal. He put his thumbprint to a deed of sale."

  "Do you suppose he understood what he was doing?"

  "Don't go 'noble savage' on me, old girl. These people are like children. Never even saw a wheel before. Those chaps down there were hauling logs on their heads. So I managed to lay hand on some wheelbarrows, and I explained that they were for the logs. Next day I saw them carrying the logs inside the wheelbarrows all right, with the wheelbarrows on their heads! And they have no notion of property, no notion of what they can do with land. It was going to waste. Someone had to step in and do something with it. If we British ha
dn't, then the Germans or the Arabs would have. Better us taking care of these people than the Hun or the Mohammedan slavers."

  He strode away from her toward Mount Kenya, with his hands on his hips, as if he were going to shout at the mountain. "Yes," he said in a deadly even tone, "I'm going to do something with this land." Valentine's black eyes blazed as the wind whipped his hair and cut through his shirt. He had a wild, challenging look, as if daring Africa to defeat him. Grace sensed something barely harnessed within her brother, an energy only just under control, an obsession and a madness that had to be kept under constant rein. It was a strange power that drove him, she knew, a force that had propelled him out of dull, old, law-burdened England and into this untamed, lawless Dark Continent. He had come to conquer; he was going to sweep his hand across this primordial Eden and leave his mark.

  "You see now, don't you?" he cried into the wind. "You understand now, don't you, Grace? Why I stayed here? Why I couldn't go back to England when I was discharged from the army?"

  His hands curled into fists.

  "Feudal" she had called it. Valentine liked that. Lord Treverton, truly an earl over a domain of his own creation, not like Bella Hill, where obsequious cap-lifting peasants lived on mediocre farms and looked up at the big house as if it were a Christmas pudding. Suffolk revolted him in its tiresome tradition and done things and eternal sameness, where men's imaginations stretched no farther than tea time. When Valentine had come to British East Africa to fight the Germans, he had suddenly come alive. He had looked around himself and had seen: what he had to do; where he belonged. Destiny filled him; purpose flooded his veins. It was as if Africa, a slumbering, clumsy giant waiting to be wakened and prodded into productive life, had been waiting for him and for men like him.

  Valentine trembled in the wind, not with cold but with vision. He lifted his dark eyes to the ominous clouds and hoisted a mental saber. He felt as if he rode a warhorse and faced an army. He felt clad in armor and backed by a host of thousands. Ancient fighting blood was stirred from dormancy; ancestral Trevertons shouted silently in his brain. Conquer, they said. Subjugate...