Strange Gods

by Annamaria Alfieri

She started to get up, but Newland put out his hand. “Please rest a minute. The boys will bring you some tea. I will be back in a moment.” He turned and walked away, pushing his son ahead of him.

  Tea was what she longed for, but she did not lie back. “Where is my brother? I want to see him immediately.”

  Newland waved his right hand over his head, without turning around. “Just a minute.” They went into a tent across the clearing. The flap of it closed behind them.

  “I will not be put off,” she shouted after him. Muiri came and sat beside the camp bed and took Vera’s hand. It was entirely unclear whether she wanted to give comfort or get it. Vera herself wanted neither.

  Why had her brother not greeted her? Was he in that tent? Was he ill? She jumped up and ran to find out. As she crossed the campground, she saw a flash of red hair to her right. Her heart lifted and then sank. It was Berkeley Cole. Not Otis. She continued toward Newland’s tent. He came out just as she arrived and handed her an envelope.

  Her name was written on it—“Miss Vera McIntosh”—in her brother’s neat and gentlemanly script.

  She tore it open. The paper inside said, “Dear Vera, By the time you read this, I will be very far away. I fear we will never see one another again. Uncle Josiah’s death is my fault and mine alone. I had to save Mother. Please be very kind to her. Do not blame her. Do not let her confess.” In the final sentence, the word “not” was underlined four times. The letter was signed, “Your loving brother, Otis.”

  She stared at the paper in astonishment, several times opening her mouth to speak, but not able to force out any words.

  Richard Newland stood next to her, looking expectantly into her face.

  She folded the paper and held it and the envelope to her heart. She looked right into Newland’s sad eyes. “Have you read this letter?” Her voice was sharp.

  “No,” he said, “but I think I know what it says.”

  “What? You tell me what you think this abominable message says.”

  He, too, was having difficulty getting his words to flow. “Otis talked to me at length and he—”

  A great noise was rising up at the edge of the camp, shouting and clattering. Berkeley Cole came running. “I’ve seen them. It’s Denys, with a large party. They are at doubletime. I think Justin Tolliver is with them.”

  Vera ran to the noise. With no thought of anything. Just moved to him.

  As soon as he saw her, he ran to her. He was sweating and panting.

  She threw herself into his arms.

  He tried to hold her off. He must smell disgusting.

  She held on to him with her arms around his neck. She was weeping.

  He embraced her, kissed the top of her head. After a minute or two, he managed gently to peel her arms from him. “I’m a stinking mess,” he whispered in her ear. It seemed entirely the wrong thing to say.

  “Life is a stinking mess,” she said and sank to the ground.

  * * *

  Once the tumult of their arrival had subsided, he took Vera aside and spoke to her first and alone, she sitting on the camp bed under the tree and he cross-legged on the ground beside it. She had a teacup in her hands. His was on the grass next to his foot.

  “I came to arrest Richard Newland for your uncle’s murder,” he said. “As you already know, the murder weapon belonged to him. Finch Hatton told me.”

  “I came to the police station to tell you,” she said, “but you were visiting Mrs. Buxton at the time.” The sadness in her brown eyes took on an offended glint.

  He could not tell her anything but the truth. “She means nothing to me,” he said. “You are the only woman who interests me.”

  She stopped breathing. Tears came to her eyes. She reached out and touched his face. He took her hand and kissed it.

  “When I realized it was Newland,” she said after a moment, “I became afraid for my brother, so I came to protect him.”

  Tolliver realized he had not seen the boy in the helter-skelter of his arrival. “Where is he?”

  She reached into her pocket and handed him a paper.

  He scanned it quickly. “This shocks me,” he said.

  “No more than it does me.” A tear escaped her eye. He had to force himself not to kiss it as it ran down her cheek.

  “Do you believe this?” He held up the note between his index and middle fingers.

  “I don’t want to, but it is in Otis’s hand, and it was sealed in an envelope addressed by him to me.” She dug the envelope out of her pocket.

  He took it. “I will have to keep these for now.”

  She snatched them back. “No!” She said it so loudly that it caused the boys tending the cook fire several yards away to look over at them. She had suddenly realized that it implicated her mother. He, the policeman, would have to arrest her mother.

  “Suppose it isn’t true. Suppose the killer really was Richard Newland.” She knew her statements were useless.

  He shook his head and pointed to the paper in her hand. “How can that be?”

  She bit on her bottom lip. “Suppose— Suppose … that … Richard forced him to write this and then killed him. Suppose he wants to save himself by casting the blame on my poor brother.”

  “Dearest Vera,” he said gently. “That does not seem at all likely. And if it were true, why would your brother have said anything about your mother?”

  Defiance won out over the fear in her eyes. “It’s absurd. My mother would not have killed her brother. I cannot imagine what my brother meant by saying such a thing.”

  “Was Otis very fond of your mother? And she of him?”

  “Extraordinarily so.” Vera did not say what she always thought of her mother—that she did not love her daughter half as much as she loved her son.

  “Well, then,” Justin said, “it is all very easy to explain. Your brother feared your mother would try to take the blame, to save your brother from being accused. She would not be the first parent to want to make such a sacrifice for a child.”

  “Do you think it could be true? That Otis did it. That he is afraid my mother will try to shield him by confessing to the crime?”

  He nodded an emphatic yes.

  She folded up the envelope and the note and pressed them deep into the pocket of her skirt.

  “I feel so dirty and sweaty,” she said. “I wish I could bathe in the river.”

  “Can’t we?” he asked, before he realized that he might have been talking about them bathing together. He blushed, but he could not banish the thought.

  “It doesn’t seem so. There could be crocodiles.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Pity.”

  While the safari boys roasted a haunch of antelope meat and some of the sweet potatoes they had dragged with them all those miles from the Chania Bridge, Tolliver told Newland that he had been a suspect in the killing of Josiah Pennyman. But that he no longer was. That he and Vera would have to go back to Nairobi directly to make the proper depositions and close the case.

  Finch Hatton and Cole had come upon them while they spoke. Tolliver’s resentment of his rival had all but completely evaporated the moment Vera McIntosh ran toward both of them and threw herself into Tolliver’s arms. He had embraced her, his heart singing because she was safe. But also because she had felt to him at that moment like a hard-won prize. She was off in a tent now, bathing, Newland had said.

  “What about young Otis?” Denys asked, helping himself to a drink from a tray table between Richard Newland and his glum son. “A fourteen-year-old boy cannot simply vanish. There has to be a way to track him.” He looked at Newland as if challenging him to go and find the boy.

  “I advised him to go to Lake Victoria and take the steamer into Uganda,” Richard Newland said. “I want him to get away. I told him who would help him, gave him the means, and I promised I would never betray him.” He poked the fire in front of him, which was dying. One of the porters put more wood on it. “And I never will. Whatever happened, he did my family a favor.
We cannot give Antonia’s sister her innocence back, but at least the blackguard who took it from her got his just desserts.”

  “Who would have imagined it?” Cole said. “A spotty youth like Otis McIntosh.”

  Newland took off his hat and passed his hand through his damp black hair. “He said he did and I believe him. Not only believe him, I applaud him. I wish I had had the courage to do it myself.”

  Tolliver let them think what they wanted. It would be better if they thought the matter completely settled. But he knew it was not, that there was still a piece of this puzzle missing. The answer to why. Why would Otis McIntosh have killed his uncle? His note to his sister said he did it to save his mother. But to save her from what? There was still at least one question an assistant district supervisor of police needed to answer before he could close the file on this sordid affair. If he clung to the letter of the law, by rights he ought to arrest Newland for helping a murderer escape. He would not. He was happy that he would not have to arrest Vera on that same charge. Vera who was in a tent, bathing now in that huge tin bathtub that Newland had caused his porters to lug through the wilderness along with the crystal and the china from which the party were about to dine.

  * * *

  Vera picked at her supper, though it was the best meal she had had since she left home. She had taken a place next to Justin Tolliver at the table. He put his hand over hers when they were side by side, and left it there while they breathed two breaths. When he took his hand away she looked into his eyes and smiled, rather wanly she imagined.

  The gentlemen at the table were assiduously avoiding any mention of her brother or anything at all disturbing, for that matter. Cole and Newland talked of farming, and Dicky Newland quizzed Tolliver about the upcoming cricket match between the Railway Society squad and the Nairobi Club’s team. All very civilized and proper, when her heart was broken and all she wanted to do was scream at them that she wanted her Otis back.

  When she placed her perfectly pressed white damask napkin next to her plate and said she wanted rest, Tolliver rose and took her gently by the elbow and helped her up. They all made appropriately understanding, murmuring noises.

  Muiri helped her disrobe and on with her muslin nightdress. Once Vera lay on her cot, the girl made off. Vera imagined she was finding company among the boys of her village who had come along on this journey. Vera envied her the freedom, envied her the love, if one could call it that, that she would receive. Yes, Vera thought, she did call it love. Though she had no experience of it herself, from what the girls she had known from babyhood had told her, it was wonderful. The kind of thing that would make one giggle. Vera wept instead, about her own loss. Her own loneliness. She was so tired of weeping.

  She was still awake when the camp went completely silent except for the singing of the cicadas and the gurgling of the river. When she heard a movement outside her tent, her first thought was that it was a hippo, but she had not noticed any in the river. Then she heard Tolliver whisper her name. “Vera?” Softly. It was the first time she had ever heard him say it. Not “Miss McIntosh,” as would have been proper. “Vera?” he said again, still softly. “I’ve come to see if you are alright.”

  She threw off the mosquito netting, drew a shawl around her, and went to the flap of the tent. “Yes,” she said.

  “You don’t need anything?” He was just on the other side of the canvas, his voice barely audible.

  She reached out, parted the opening. She moved toward him. He smelled of soap. He was silhouetted against the pale light of the crescent moon. She dropped her shawl and put her hands on his upper arms.

  “I need—” She swallowed. “I need you.”

  It took only one small step for him to be inside the tent with her. The flap closed behind him, and she was in his arms, kissing him. Then there was no separate him deciding what to do, no separate her. Just the two of them entwined, with no way to stop all they wanted to be to each other. Her skin. And his. Her arms. And his lifting her to the cot. His lips. Her breasts. His hands. And hers. The sweet smell of her hair. The quickness of his breath.

  When the moment came for him to enter her, he hesitated. But she did not. “Love me. Please just love me,” she whispered.

  And he did.

  19.

  Before the sky turned light, Tolliver kissed her once more and left her.

  By the time Vera was fully awake, the camp was bustling, and Muiri had folded her shawl and put her few things in her rucksack.

  Standing near the fire, Tolliver bid her a proper good morning and went to fetch her a mug of tea.

  She let their hands touch momentarily as he handed it to her. She was careful not to look in his eyes. The skin of her arms drank in his nearness. He stayed close. That was enough for her.

  Richard Newland and Denys Finch Hatton were splitting off with Cole toward his farm on the Naro Moru River. Kinuthia would go with them. Vera’s and Tolliver’s party would follow the plain trail back to Nyeri.

  “We had best then cross the hills from Nyeri back to Naivasha,” Vera said. “I must visit Ngethe’s wives and children and tell them what has befallen him.” For a second she allowed herself to glance into Justin’s eyes. She found the understanding she was looking for in them.

  “Is that the way you came?” Finch Hatton asked.

  “Yes,” Vera said. She was solemn, but he laughed.

  “What a girl, you are,” he said.

  And Justin thought, If you only knew. And it satisfied him deeply that Finch Hatton never would really know her. “We can take the train back to Athi River from Naivasha,” he said. “And I’ll send a telegram to the district commissioner.”

  “And to my parents,” Vera said.

  “We had better get underway, then,” Tolliver said, taking charge, as was right under the circumstances.

  They bid their good-byes, and Tolliver took his group south along the river, while Newland and Cole took their party east.

  Vera and Tolliver camped twice more before they reached Nyeri. And each night when all was quiet and Kwai and the other boys were organized on their guard duties, Tolliver found his way to Vera’s arms. Their separateness evaporated the minute they embraced. During those nights, Vera learned why the Kikuyu girls giggled when they spoke of sex. With all her sadness still upon her, she could not yet laugh with their lovemaking, but she felt the heaviness in her heart lift when her arms were around Justin and her lips on his.

  On the third night, crossing the hills between Nyeri and Naivasha, before darkness fell they stopped in a forest clearing. The boys needed to keep a bonfire going all night to repel any prowling predators. Its light and that of the half moon made their camp brighter than on the previous nights. Justin should not have cared what the askaris and porters thought of him, but he still felt he had to protect Vera from their knowing he was with her in the night. Nonetheless, after barely an hour’s hesitation, he gave in to his need for her and made his way to her tent.

  When he opened the flap, enough light entered with him to reveal her—beautiful in her white nightdress, sitting cross-legged on her cot.

  She leapt up and into his arms with that incredible grace of hers. And the power of his love for her held all his misgivings at bay.

  Afterward, as they lay on her little narrow cot, with her body on his, her head on his shoulder, the scent of her enveloping him, he had to talk about the coming days, about how he would shield her from the world’s knowledge of their love.

  “Tomorrow,” he whispered, “we will arrive in Naivasha and we will have to— We cannot let anyone see— We cannot continue to—”

  She jumped up, jamming her knee into his hip in the process. “Continue to what? See what? That I am a hussy? That you are not a gentleman? What do we have to hide from the world? Our sin?”

  He sat up and reached for her. She was talking much too loudly. He did not want her to hurt. He just wanted to protect her. “Vera, please. Don’t—”

  “Don’t what?” S
he beat off his hands and stepped back, upsetting the folding washstand in the corner. The metal basin clattered to the ground in the darkness. “Just get out of here, Mr. Proper English Gentleman.”

  “Oh, Vera, you mustn’t interpret what I said that way? What has happened is my fault.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew they were entirely the wrong ones.

  “Please, just go.” Her voice was quiet now, and cold.

  “I do not want the world to think—”

  “I know exactly what you don’t want the world to think. You don’t want anyone to know that you have behaved in an ungentlemanlike fashion. And that I have done what no proper lady would do. Very well. We will tell no one. Now, just go.”

  “Vera, please, I said it badly. I think—” He tried to take her in his arms, but she pushed him off.

  “I know what you think I am.”

  “I think you are the most wonderful of girls. I love you.”

  “Very nice,” she said completely without warmth. “Now, just go. I have a difficult day tomorrow.”

  * * *

  They did not speak to one another at all during the three-hour trek to Naivasha the next morning. Only in silence, in their own minds, which were far from quiet, did they formulate the words to express their remorse, their fear, their longing. They both looked back on those four days and nights as idyllic: walking side by side through the vast wilderness, the colors, the scents, the birds whose names she had told him, the shadows of the clouds on the sea of grass that stretched out for miles, the chants of the porters as they tramped along, the English songs the two of them had sung to keep themselves going. The grazing antelope. The long line of elephants silhouetted against sunset. And then, after dark, the brilliance of the stars as they sat together and dined by lamplight. The delicious nights in one another’s arms, the fun of working out who should be where on her impossibly small camp bed. The ecstasy they learned to produce in one another. They both wanted it all back, and they both feared they would never again have it.

  His guilt had spoiled it for her. But she held her head high as she walked along those final miles. She refused to see herself as a sinner. If God had made her body, He must have wanted girls to long for love the way she did. The Commandments said she must not commit adultery, but that was only if they were already married and she wanted to lay with someone other than him. But she wanted no one else. She refused to accept what he probably thought. That somehow, by accepting his love, she had condemned herself to his rejection. She wished she could hate him for what he had said. Wished her anger were strong enough to make her stop wanting to have him the way she’d had, in her arms, inside her body in the night.