Steven’s jeep is parked outside, windows open, but there is no key in the ignition. Where would I go—even if I could get away? I don’t see Sara anywhere. I go to my bedroom, lock the door and stand with my back pressed against it. Slowly I slide down the door until I am crouching, holding my knees.
The Markhams are thirty miles away across open bush, and it is growing dark. I would never make it. And he will find me if I run. Michael is right. Steven is less of a danger to me here, in this house. He likes the hunt.
This is not the first time I have sat like this. There was my uncle’s house at Uplands. The day I heard that my mother was dead. Steven on the other side of the door; me waiting for him to leave.
My mouth opens in a silent scream. There is not room enough in my head for everything that has happened. Michael. The knife in his hand. Bowker’s book. The guns. Steven. His weight pinning me down. Michael clutching me. I get nothing for myself. Not even this. My jaw hurts where Steven slapped me. My eyes sting but tears do not come. I cannot think. I am holding my breath. Waiting.
My father will be back tomorrow. If I tell him everything, will he understand?
At last I hear footsteps running up the track. Steven’s voice shouting for Sara. Exclamations. Shouts for Kahiki. The voices of Africans gathering. He must have been let out of the barn. My jaw is clenched so tight that my teeth hurt and my face is shaking. I think he will knock down the door and pull me out of my room. My heart pounds, waiting for it. I hear them in the sitting room but not what they are saying. There is urgency in his voice, not brute anger, and—after a moment—I realize he is not going to come. He is going after Michael, not me. I hear the engine starting, the car driving past my window. I breathe out, tears pouring down my face. It is over. He is gone.
“Open the door.” Sara’s voice, outside the room.
I scramble to my feet. My heart beats in a rapid, jerking movement. I have to face whatever she will say. This is what is demanded of my courage.
I unlock the door and open it. She walks past me into the room. I am not expecting it and I step back. She takes the key from the inside of the door, then she walks over to the corner of the room where the paraffin lamp hangs. She unhooks it.
“Is there word from my father?” I need him to come back. Only he can protect me from Steven. “Will he be back tomorrow, like he said?”
She does not reply. She takes the matches from the bedside table, slides the gun into her hand and picks up the candle.
“Wait—” I say, putting a hand on her arm.
She shivers and takes her arm back, as though I have spat on her.
“I want to explain. Why won’t you talk to me—?”
She begins to pull the door shut. I try to force it open, but she has it closed before I can get a grip on it.
“You can’t leave me without a candle.” I plead with her, but she does not reply. The key turns in the lock.
“Don’t lock me in!” I shout. I hammer on the door with my fists. “What if they come? What if you can’t get to me in time?”
Her footsteps move off down the corridor. She is gone. I try the door—the handle turns, but it is locked. The window is barred. The room has become a prison and I am trapped.
I go to the window; a white square of light, crossed by wire mesh. I slip my fingers through the holes and hold on to the wire. Beyond the plains is the forest—a dark undulating blanket of green, cloaking the earth that rises over the mountains in the distance. Michael. He will be running still, through the bush and across open fields, trying to get to higher ground before Steven can track him down. I have walked up into the foothills of Mount Kenya. The forest is darker and colder than you can imagine. The undergrowth is dense and the sun scarcely penetrates onto the forest floor. Game tracks are broken by escarpments and fast-flowing rivers which must be waded, chest high, and the rain falls through the trees, soaking you to the skin. The nights—high up on the mountain—bring freezing chills, and the danger of leopard and hyena. It is hard to imagine that men have been living there for months, surviving on so little, hunted by the British, and hunting in return. What hope is there for Michael?
I hear Mungai moving around the house, lighting the fire. The room is darkening, dusk is approaching. I have not eaten since breakfast. I go to the door and knock softly. “Mungai,” I say in Swahili. “Bring me some food.” Sara says something to Mungai. She is in the sitting room. She has heard me. “The dogs—” I call out, remembering. “Make sure they are locked up safely tonight.” No one answers; no one comes to the door. I do not knock again. Night falls and I have no light to break the darkness. I feel my way to the bathroom, wash my hands and face, and drink water from my cupped hands. It is cold and fresh, straight from the depths of the earth. I feel my way to the bed and lie down. The darkness is thick and heavy all around me. Dawn will not lighten the sky for over ten hours. Where is my father? Why has he left me here on my own, with a woman who does not like me? Why does he not come back for me? The sound of a leopard calling sifts hoarsely through the night.
—
I CANNOT SLEEP. In the morning the smell of cakes baking in the fire oven drifts in under the thatch. Jim must be preparing for the party. The Coronation is tomorrow. My father should be back today. Mungai knocks on the door and brings a bread roll and water, no butter. He avoids my eyes. Sara is standing at the door behind him. She looks at me but says nothing. It is disconcerting. I had expected her to attack me, to call me names. Her silence scares me. It keeps me pinned here.
“My father will blame you for this,” I say, standing at the door, looking at her, but still she does not speak. When Mungai has put down the plate and the water, she motions for him to close the door, and the key rotates again in the lock. My whole mind is absorbed on my father coming home. His anger when he sees me imprisoned. I will explain to him what Sara will surely tell him—that Michael and I have been close. I can make him understand. And I will tell him about Steven—what he did to me yesterday, that Michael was protecting me. I will hold almost nothing back, but I will not tell him about the guns in Michael’s hut. It is too late for that—he does not need to know.
In the afternoon I hear a car on the track. I rush to the window and see my father’s Land Rover drive past. The engine cuts and I hear the rich, warm sound of his voice, greeting Sara. I let out a sob of relief and rush to the door. I hammer my hands against the wood.
“Papa! Papa!” I shout.
There is a small silence, then—with a dread beat, I hear Steven’s voice. The soft, gravel undertone. And I freeze. I press my forehead against the door, my legs shudder and a cry of anguish spills out of me. I have waited for my father all through the long, dark night, and now I feel through my limbs a soft weakness. I have not slept and my eyes feel sharp and dry, and my stomach is clenched with hunger. I had not thought that Steven would come. He must have already told my father everything. He is not leaving anything to chance. But he is my father. I am his daughter. All that matters is that he is here—when he sees what they have done to me he will understand.
I stand at the door waiting for him, but it is Sara who unlocks it and I feel a leap of panic that my father has not come himself. He must have heard me cry out. He must know that I have been locked inside. Why has he not come? Has Steven already perverted his mind against me? It is two weeks since I have seen him. Despite all the tensions between us—I feel a longing for the sound of his voice. The sight of him. The feel of his hand on my shoulder.
I walk through to the sitting room. My father sits in a chair facing me. Sara is at my back. I have spoken scarcely a word to anyone since the previous afternoon, and my mouth feels dry. I lick at my lips to loosen them. Steven. He is there too, sitting to my right, opposite the cold fire, his feet outstretched, rubbing the arch of one socked foot over the other. I feel a sliding panic when our eyes meet, his jaw locked, his eyebrows raised in ironic appreciatio
n, his gaze a deliberate, slow thirst for subordination.
My father’s eyes are hollow and red. His head is down slightly like a bear, his face is creased with exhaustion and gray stubble grows over his grease-marked face. Who knows what he has been through in the forest. Sara hands me a glass of water and I notice as I take it that my fingernails are black with dirt, and my hand shakes as I hold the glass. The water tastes strange in my mouth.
“Rachel, sit down,” my father says, gesturing to a chair in front of him. I want to ask him if we can be alone, but I don’t know how. It might make my defense weaker if I cannot speak it in front of everyone. He runs a hand over the stubble on his chin, pushes his thumb and forefinger into his eyes, then looks at me, and I feel a moment of infinite sadness. Something inside me is breaking.
“Is it true you allowed Michael to be intimate with you?”
My face burns. I cannot answer. It is the wrong question. It leaves room for nothing but a hot, close shame. A truth that I cannot grapple with and articulate.
“How far did it go?” he asks, breathing into the back of his hand.
I do not answer. There is Michael lifting me. The barn. The things that pass between us.
“Rachel,” Sara speaks for the first time. I look at her. Her voice is clipped and cold. “Your father is asking you a question. It is too late for embarrassment. He wants to know—did you have explicit sexual relations with the boy?”
“What if I did?” My voice sounds quiet and yet too loud.
“Goddamn it, Rachel!” he says.
My head is dizzy—I dig the knuckle of my thumb into my forehead to steady myself.
“Can we be alone?” I ask my father in the ghost of a whisper.
“It is too late for that,” he says, waving a hand in dismissal. Too late. The words unroll themselves in my head. Why should it be too late?
“I warned you, Robert,” Sara is saying.
“Did you know that he was Mau Mau?” my father says. I shake my head. Everything feels very light, as though I might lose gravity. My heart is beating rapidly. I blink and force myself to look at him. There were the things I wanted to say, that I had rehearsed, but they seem far away from me now.
“He stole the radio from the barn. He was listening to it in the garage.”
“He didn’t take it. I found it. I asked him to fix it for me.”
“And you left it down there for him? Why?” my father asks, his mouth grimacing in disbelief.
“I told you something like this would happen if she wasn’t better controlled,” Sara says.
Where do I begin on what I want to say? How can I say it in front of Steven? He is there, at the corner of my vision. I feel his eyes on me, searching me out. The skin on my arms, the edges of my spine, prickle under his gaze. He has orchestrated this moment, and I am trapped within it.
“He had a right to listen to the news,” I say, but my voice is not as strong as I want it to be.
“You may have to go to the Home Guard post with Steven,” my father says, not listening to me. “To answer questions.”
A tightness slips round my chest; panic stirring within me. I cannot be left alone with Steven.
Sara’s mouth is moving, but I cannot hear her words. I try to concentrate but there is a buzzing in my head. I open my mouth to speak but nothing comes out.
“I don’t think she is well.” Steven’s voice cuts through the dizziness that is engulfing me. I see out of the corner of my eye that he is beginning to move. I turn to look at him, horror rising like nausea in my chest. The crease on his trousers, the weight of his thighs, as he stands up. I’m on my feet, trying to get away, knocking the chair over backward. He is walking toward me. A shout spills out of me, from deep in my guts. I turn to get away, but he catches hold of my wrist, pulling it with a jerk, and I lose my footing, slipping down onto the rug. I scramble to get away, but he crouches down over me. I kick out at him with my bare feet but they make no impact. I try to slide out from under him but his hands are holding mine, pulling them apart, opening me up. My chest burns. I am screaming.
“I’ve got her. I’ve got her.” His voice is like his hands, another form of control.
“Where is my father?” I cannot see him.
Steven is levering himself forward, down over my body. Just as he did before. “She’s having a fit.”
“Papa! Papa!” I am screaming.
His shins on my thighs, his knees digging into the soft part of my hips so that I cannot move, his hands still holding mine to the floor, as they strain against his. A nightmare repeating itself. My muscles are taut, but I cannot effect any movement. And this inability to move, to close my arms, to raise my hips off the floor, courses through me, a hot blind panic like my blood is made of molten lead. I smash my head against the floor, over and over. The pain is a relief. It blocks out my body, which is trapped under his.
Sara’s face behind his; a small brown bottle; my chest still vibrating but I cannot hear the noise. His hand grasps my jaw, forcing my mouth to open. Sara tips a pill into my mouth, and another. Bitter on my tongue. One of his hands presses on my head so that I cannot move it, cannot strike it to the floor. I scream again, hearing it this time, cutting through the pain, and blackness rises up within me like a current, until I see no more.
XXV
When I open my eyes the bedroom is in near darkness. I feel groggy, unwell. I stagger to the bathroom, lift back my hair and I am sick. I sit for a while with my head against the cold enamel of the toilet bowl, then rise and suck water from the tap. There are voices from the sitting room. My father. Sara. But not the other man. The one I fear. I go to the door and turn the handle. It is locked. I sink to the floor, holding my knees, leaning my head against the wood. Sleep pulls at me.
“I foresaw this . . . incomprehensible . . . a danger to herself.”
My father’s voice is no more than a murmur. It sifts over me, soothing the sourness of my blood. For a moment I lose myself, and it is as though I am listening to my parents, their voices drifting through the house. “Ten cakes baked . . . Sandwiches to be made up fresh in the morning. Not a lunch exactly, more of a buffet. The wireless . . . The Markhams, Steven . . . around one o’clock. Eliot is coming from Uplands with the pig—first thing . . . seven o’clock. Plenty of time.”
My mind drifts. Then there is Sara again. Clearer this time. “An excellent doctor . . . very good results . . . a mental aberration . . . awful . . . the mother’s fault . . . too much isolation, too much contact from an early age . . . suppose the servants have known all along? What will they say in Nairobi? Tomorrow? After the party? I don’t see any other way.”
The words wash over me. I try to make sense of them, but my head is thick and heavy as though it is made of stone, and I need to lie down. I crawl to the bed and slide in under the cold sheets, and lay my head on the pillow.
When I wake again someone has lit a lamp in the corner of the room. A thin light filters through the edges of the curtains. I go to the window and pull back the fabric a fraction. The moon has risen, and the land outside—the papyrus grass, the tangled arms of the fever trees, are bathed in silver light. I have no idea what time it is. There is bread and cheese on a plate by the bed. I try to eat but it is difficult to break through the bread—my jaw hurts from where Steven hit me; from clenching it so hard. I touch the muscles with my fingertips, feeling out the swelling. I go to the bathroom. There is a lamp in here also, turned down low. I look in the mirror. My hair falls loose, long and unbrushed around my face; my eyes are wide, my cheeks are pale, a bruise is darkening one side of my jaw. It is my mother who looks back at me. A stranger in the mirror. I shut my eyes. A long time seems to pass. When I open them again nothing has changed.
In the cupboard hangs a single dress. The one I kept. The green shot silk glows emerald in the lamplight, shifting softly under my fingers. I pull off my vest so that
I am naked. When I step into the dress I see my legs white and thin, shaking. I slide my arms into the sleeves. The fabric is cold against my breasts. I reach behind me for the buttons, and manage—with unsteady fingers—to do up enough to hold me. It is the Coronation tomorrow. I will go to the party. My father will forgive me.
I go to the door and try the handle. To my surprise it yields when I turn it. They have not locked it. I step out into the corridor, the dress rustling as I walk. My ears are ringing. There is a soft, droning voice coming from the sitting room. The wireless. I listen, steadying my breathing. It is not clear to me what I should do.
Crowds are camped outside Buckingham Palace tonight as the world awaits the Coronation. The event will be broadcast in over forty-four different languages, in a service which descends directly from that of King Edgar at Bath in 973 . . .
My father sits in the chair facing me, his eyes half-closed. With relief I see he is alone. There is only one lamp on in the room, and the fire emits a crimson, shifting light, full of shadows. A shotgun is across his lap.
The Queen will be driven from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey in the Gold State coach, pulled by eight gray geldings . . .
His face is creased into deep folds. I wonder if he is asleep, when he looks up suddenly and our eyes meet. His body does not move, but his eyes fix on me, as if I am a ghost. I stand in the near darkness. My legs feel brittle as though they might not hold me, and I put a hand to the doorframe. The dress shifts as I move.
“I thought you were your mother,” he says in a hoarse voice, and I see the rise and fall of his throat as he swallows.
“Papa—” I cannot say anything more. My throat chokes.
“Rachel—” he says in a low voice, still staring at me. “What has happened to you?” I cannot read his face. Is it disappointment or shame he feels when he looks at me?
Leopard at the Door Page 27
