She sat at her vanity to let Njeri comb out her hair. After Rose had had her hair cut for the night of the gala opening of Bellatu, twenty-five years ago, she had let it grow out again, so that it now tumbled down her back to her waist. It was still the color of a harvest moon, still youthful and shiny, and had not a single gray hair, despite the fact that Lady Rose Treverton had just celebrated her forty-fifth birthday.
The radio broadcast crackled, faded, then died out. Rose gave the radio a mournful look. It seemed one couldn't depend on anything anymore.
She found matters not much better downstairs in the kitchen, where, a few minutes later, she came upon one of the African house girls buttering the bread before toasting it. "And the tea supply is getting lower," she murmured when she looked into the caddy. Supplies from Nairobi were infrequent and rarely complete. So much had to go to the war effort—to the feeding of Kenya's troops and the thousands of Italian prisoners coming into the colony—that little was left, it seemed to Lady Rose, for the civilians to pick over.
If Valentine were here, she was certain, such would not be the case.
But Lord Treverton had signed on to the King's African Rifles four years ago, when Italian forces had invaded northern Kenya. He had been there ever since, first fighting the campaign in Ethiopia that had signaled the collapse of the Italian Army in East Africa and now an officer in the intelligence section of the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration, policing the border between Kenya and Somaliland. He had been home only once in all that time.
And now, by great irony, Rose thought as she rationed out Countess Treverton tea into her teapot, after so many Kenya boys had fought and died in that bitter battle with the Italians, her own husband nearly dying from a septic wound, eighty thousand Italian POWs were being held in camps all over Kenya, requiring to be fed and clothed.
She resented it and wondered why the British government didn't just pack them all off back to Italy.
"Good morning, Mother!" Mona said as she came through the kitchen door, a rifle in her hand. "Finally got the leopard that's been at the pigs! I've told the chaps to give you the skin when they're done with it."
Rose gave her daughter a disapproving look—for several reasons. The first was Mona's inappropriate behavior. The Honorable Mona Treverton should not go stamping about the bush with a man's rifle, shooting leopards. The second was the way Mona spent her time these days. In her father's absence Mona had gradually taken over the running of the plantation, to the point of working in the midst of their Africans and even fixing machinery with her own hands! But lastly and most important, Lady Rose did not approve of her daughter's unladylike appearance.
Mona wore trousers and boots, with a khaki blouse tucked inside her belt. She wore her black, shoulder-length hair in a pageboy caught up in a common scarf knotted on top of her head. And from where Rose sat at the table monitoring the toast, she could see her daughter's hands as she washed at the sink; they were rough and brown from farm work.
"Where's Tim?" Rose asked, referring to the young man who had once been Arthur's friend and whose life Arthur had saved in the alley seven years ago. He had become a familiar figure around the Treverton plantation.
"He's gone up to Kilima Simba to join Uncle James in the search for the Italians."
"Italians?"
"I told you about it yesterday, Mother." Mona tested the tea, poured two cups, and joined Rose at the table. "Three prisoners escaped from the camp near Nanyuki. There's a large manhunt out for them."
"But why? There are Italians practically running loose all over. James has several working on his ranch, and your aunt Grace has two of them in her hospital kitchen. They're free to come and go, it seems to me."
Mona picked up the bundle of mail that lay untouched on the table; her mother wouldn't get to it for days, she knew.
Mona was aware of Rose's feelings toward the Italians. They were responsible for Valentine's being absent from Bellatu, and they were an expensive burden on Kenya—eighty thousand of them, requiring a pound of meat per day each. That was why there was such a steady slaughter of wildlife going on in the forests, with trucks driving past Bellatu every day loaded with zebra and eland carcasses. Rose was enraged over the mass, reckless hunting, and she blamed the Italians for it.
"These three were special prisoners," Mona explained as she looked through the envelopes. "Officers. One is even a general, I'm told. They had been kept under strict guard. Apparently, when they escaped, one of the guards was killed, so things are in an uproar."
Rose lightly buttered the toast, cut off the crusts, and handed a plate to Mona. "I hope Tim and James are careful."
"Yes, and I wish you wouldn't go into the glade today, Mother. Or at least if you do, please take a couple of chaps with you."
Rose shook her head. "The escaped prisoners can hardly have gotten down this far. I should imagine they would have headed north, toward So-maliland. Perhaps your father will capture them. In any case, I don't care for this subject—"
"Mother, I do wish you would be realistic! These men are desperate and dangerous! The guard they killed—they butchered him. He was mutilated. Please stay in the house until—"
Rose stood abruptly. "You've upset me, Mona. You really have, with your talk. I shall go without breakfast."
"Mother—"
"Come along, Njeri."
Njeri Mathenge, who had been at the counter putting together a lunch of strawberries and cream, cold meat pies, and soft cheeses, said, "Yes, memsaab," took up the picnic basket and Rose's parasol, and followed her mistress through the back door.
As soon as Rose was in the garden, in the fresh air and sunshine, she felt better. And the farther along the path she walked, with Bellatu receding until it disappeared behind the trees, and the deeper she went into the last, untouched reserve of forest where no one, except for herself and Njeri, ever went, the more she felt the troubles in her heart lift and vanish.
The glade was nearly the same as it had been the day she had found it twenty-five years ago. The gazebo was weathered, its paint peeling, but the trees were lush and green, the flowers a mass of color, with birds and insects filling the frangipani-scented air with song and drone. This was a world apart from the greater, ugly world where men killed and where innocent wildlife was slaughtered. Rose disliked that world; she put it from her mind.
The tapestry was secured to a large, folding frame that scrolled from left to right. As she worked, Rose turned one of the rods so that the fabric was taken up and thus kept clean. It was almost finished. Huge, as large as a tablecloth, the tapestry was covered entirely in bright flosses and yarns and fancy stitches. All that remained was the blank spot in the midst of jungle ferns and vines—the few inches which had eluded her all these years. Rose decided she would put an elephant into it, perhaps, or an African hut.
And after that, what? The tapestry had taken her twenty-five years to do. If she began another one now, Rose estimated that it would take her to the end of her life. When she died, two tapestries would show that she had lived.
A small greenhouse stood at the edge of the clearing, embraced between two mighty chestnut trees. It had been built years ago when Rose, finding she sometimes tired of stitchery, had decided to develop an interest in floriculture. The walls of the greenhouse were made of stone, but the roof was a glass skylight. There was a window; its panes had grown opaque over the years so that looking in, one could make out only indistinct shadows and smudges of color. Here was where Rose planted and nurtured her precious flowers. She sent away for catalog seeds and bulbs; she experimented in hybridization; she pruned and made cuttings and talked to her plants as if they were children. Rose won ribbons every year at the Nairobi Flower Show; it was said that she grew the most stunning orchids in East Africa.
Also in the greenhouse, among the tables of delphiniums and budding irises, stored between two lilies of the Nile whose majestic blue crowns were just beginning to blossom, were folding chairs which Rose brought ou
t on those occasions when she felt like working in the sun, like today. While Njeri erected the tapestry frame out on the grass, Rose went down to the greenhouse to fetch a chair.
As she followed the narrow footpath, she did not see, on the ground, spots of fresh blood leading to the door.
MONA WATCHED HER mother leave the kitchen garden and wondered if she should call up a couple of chaps and send them down to guard the glade. Then she decided her mother was probably right. There was no reason why the escaped POWs would head in this direction; they would more likely head west over the Aberdares or north toward Ethiopia. In fact, James Donald and Tim Hopkins were concentrating their search north of Nanyuki, and Mona prayed they would be careful. Hunting for men, she knew, was not the same as hunting for animals.
Tim had come to replace the lost brother in Mona's life. After the day of Arthur's murder, seven years ago, she and Tim had sought each other out for solace and comfort, talking about Arthur, keeping his memory and their love for him alive. Over time Tim had come to see Arthur in Mona, and Mona had seen her brother in Tim. There had evolved a gentle friendship, of which even Alice, Tim's possessive sister, once she was assured their relationship was platonic, approved.
Poor Tim had tried desperately to enlist when war broke out, but because of his lungs, he had not passed the physical exam. The recruiting officer had assured the despondent Tim that he would be a great help to Kenya's cause by staying on his Rift Valley ranch and providing the colony's troops with food and supplies. As a result, Tim and Alice Hopkins—like James Donald on Kilima Simba and Mona Treverton at Bellatu—were growing rich off the war.
Returning to the stack of mail on the table and thinking of all the things that must be seen to today—the problem with puff adders near the stock corral; what to do about the porcupines that were getting into the potato patch; the continued resistance of her father's Africans to taking orders from her—Mona picked up the latest copy of the East African Standard and looked at the picture on the front page.
Grace had gone down to Nairobi to represent the Trevertons at the swearing-in ceremony of Eliud Mathu, the first African member elected to the Legislative Council, Kenya's governing body. It was a momentous occasion, one which most people had insisted would never happen—an African in government?—and there sat Mona's aunt between the governor and Mr. Mathu. The caption beneath the picture read: "... also in attendance was Dr. Grace Treverton, known fondly among her people as 'Nyathaa.' "
That was the Africans' name for Grace, Nyathaa, which means "Mother of all goodness and love."
As Mona sipped her tea, she thought about her aunt. Grace Treverton's name had become legend in Kenya and was spreading the world over. The seventh edition of her health manual, When You Must Be the Doctor, with its simple and touching dedication "For James," was being used by soldiers in the battlefield. Grace's energy seemed limitless to Mona. At fifty-four she was showing no sign of slowing down. Indeed, Grace seemed to be picking up speed, like a whirlwind, traveling all over East and Central Africa, distributing the new yellow fever vaccine donated by the Rockefeller Foundation, visiting clinics and bush hospitals, treating wounded troops in Nairobi, and, lately, giving speeches on her newest cause: the preservation of Kenya's wildlife.
It was no wonder, Mona understood now, that Grace did not marry James after all. They had discussed it endlessly, upon their return seven years ago from Uganda. But in the end both Grace and James had had to admit that marriage for them wasn't logical. They had their separate lives and projects; Grace couldn't move to Kilima Simba, or James to the mission; she traveled here, he traveled there. They would hardly see each other, they realized, and as there could be no children for them, marriage seemed almost redundant.
And so they were good friends, taking days at a time together when they could, spending brief holidays at the coast, Grace getting into her old Ford and driving to Kilima Simba for a day or two. It was an arrangement both had come to enjoy and be happy with.
There were three letters from overseas. The first was from Mona's Aunt Edith at Bella Hill.
Since Uncle Harold had been killed at the beginning of the war when a German bomb had struck his London men's club, and since Mona's cousin, Charlotte, having trained as a nurse, was now in the South Pacific, fighting the Japanese, Aunt Edith was all alone at Bella Hill—except for seventy-eight children, who had been evacuated from London during the blitz. Edith had written:
They fill these gloomy old walls with their laughter. I love them all as if they were my own. We had only Charlotte. I had always wanted more. I have no doubt that many are orphaned; some have not heard from their parents since the start of the bombing. Whatever will be done with them after the war? This enormous old house will seem so empty then.
Now that Charlotte's married her American flier, I shall be completely alone here, and I don't look forward to that. Too many memories and ghosts. Holding on to Bella Hill was always Harold's idea. He and Valentine fought for twenty-one years, as you know, over Valentine's reckless selling off of Bella Hill land to pay for Bellatu's losses. Now I say he is welcome to it. Bella Hill is, after all, your and his house, Rose. Perhaps you would like to come back here and live? Whatever you decide to do, I have made up my mind that, after this war is over and the children are restored to their families, I shall move down to Brighton and live with my cousin Naomi. I would appreciate a yearly allowance from Valentine....
The second letter was from Mona's father. She hesitated before opening it. It was not addressed to her; it was meant for his Kikuyu headman.
She knew that this letter contained orders for the running of the farm. And Mona resented it. Since his departure in 1941 Valentine had sent letters regularly to Bellatu, instructing his various African headmen on how to run the plantation. When Mona had written back to him, suggesting she be allowed to oversee the work, he had replied with an emphatic no. Mona's dream, born seven years ago, to learn the operation of the vast coffee estate, had never materialized. No amount of arguing or trying to reason with her father—"What about after you're dead? Who'll run the farm then?"—had moved him to decide to teach her to follow in his footsteps. That was to have been Arthur's right.
Mona had shown the headmen the first few written orders sent down from Ethiopia, where her father had been fighting—orders regarding pruning, mulching, boreholes, and irrigation. But then circumstances had started to change. Kenya's troops demanded to be fed. And there were the thousands of Italian POWs whom her father was sending down to the camps, also needing food. The government had requested that farmers utilize their land to the best practical advantage, and that had meant to Mona less coffee growing and more mixed farming.
Again she had written to her father and had explained; again he would not heed her, insisting they continue with coffee only. So Mona had embarked upon a plan of her own. In her father's study was a large collection of books on agriculture, gathered over the years. Mona had read and studied them, had listened to the advice of other farmers, had gone into Nairobi to see what was needed, and then had returned and commenced to forge a new set of "orders" from her father. The first crop to go into the newly cleared acres had been maize, and she had been very successful at it.
Mona received help from Sir James and from Tim, who walked the furrows with her and pointed out this, that, and guided her along. Too, her headmen were good farmers. They could feel when the rain was coming, when the soil was too poor, when locusts threatened, how to defend against army worms. As a result, Mona's deception was a small victory over her father.
She dreaded his return after the war. There would be a terrible row, she knew, over what she had done, and then he would take charge again, forbidding any further interference on her part. That she knew she would not be able to bear. In these four years Mona had come, for the first time in her life, to feel as though Bellatu were really home. She had never before felt so belonging, so a part of these five thousand acres of green trees. She had come home on school holiday
s like a guest, sleeping in a room that could have belonged to anyone, eating with parents who were practically strangers. But now—
Bellatu was hers. And she was going to keep it.
The third letter was from Geoffrey.
Mona poured herself a second cup of tea before opening it, putting off the moment to savor it. She looked forward to his letters; lately she lived for them.
Geoffrey Donald was in Palestine, doing "police work." He couldn't say much about what he was doing, but Mona had pieced together from news accounts the dangerous situation he was in: With so many European Jews fleeing the Nazis and finding refuge in Palestine, the indigenous Arabs were feeling pushed and therefore were fighting back. In retaliation, certain secret Jewish groups were launching counterattacks to remind the British of their commitment to Zionism. It was not the safest corner of the world to be in, but Mona was glad Geoffrey was there instead of somewhere like Burma, where Kenyan troops were suffering heavy losses. He wrote now:
The war can't last forever, and when it's over, we'll see a new world come from it. You mark my words, Mona. Things will be different. It will be a Modern Age, and I intend to be part of it. I've got it in mind to do something drastically new when I get home. Tourism, Mona. This war has opened up the world. It's made people move around and see other places. It's sparked interest in travel. In the past tourism was a sport for the rich, but I believe that the ordinary man, once he's gone back to his ordinary life after fighting in exotic places, is going to want to see more. And I aim to put Kenya on the sightseeing map. Let me know what your thoughts are on this; you know how I value your opinion.
I picked up a marvelous trinket for you the other day. An old Arab brought it round to the garrison, wanted too much money for it, but I got him down. He claims it's a genuine antiquity. It's a bit of old scroll, no doubt manufactured in his backyard, but it looks like the real thing. Might make a nice decoration over the fireplace at Bellatu. Hope you're in good health, Mona. Thank you for the chocolates. You're a darling.
Green City in the Sun Page 37
